The World That Never Will Be chapter 32
by the infamous and notorious tocasia
1/3/2022
CHAPTER 32
After the initial takeoff, the flight in the gummi ship was smooth. Gravity behaved. The bobblehead hula girl on the dash bobbled.
Aqua turned off the radio. She wasn't in the mood for Merlin's taste in loud pop music.
She'd spent longer than was comfortable wondering what it was like to be a squirrel and why Merlin had said that. Could squirrels wield keyblades? Was there a world of squirrels where she'd have to find out? It would probably be bad to be a squirrel in a world of lions.
...she was a tiny dot in space and if anything went wrong she didn't have her armor.
...she was free to go wherever she wanted. To seek out Yen Sid, or rendezvous with Sephiroth, or...
There was a navigation console with green text prompts awaiting her input.
It might be a mistake, but...
...I wouldn't forgive myself if I didn't check.
Aqua keyed in her destination:
'The Land of Departure'
An apologetic beep, 'No matches found.'
She typed again:
'Castle Oblivion'
With a happy little chime, the engines lurched into hyperdrive, and she was on her way.
Hades took a seat on a fallen column as if it were the emperor's box. Sephiroth sat next to him.
"You want something to drink? Popcorn?" Hades offered him a red-and-white-striped tub.
Sephiroth refused. Underworld food was entrapping. "No thanks. Nice try."
"Suit yourself," Hades said, setting the bucket between them.
Cerberus had three heads to shake its prey to death and was born and bred for the task.
Blood ember eyes ignited in challenge, aged ivory teeth snarled with reddened gums. Hades's hound was sinuous and flexible, of monstrous size, more darkness than living beast. It did not move with normal canine anatomy; its snapping jaws should not have fit together. It thrashed its long, whipping tail, and roared.
Cloud seemed a rather cowardly wolf by comparison.
There was fear inside Cloud, fear and shame at a previous loss. Sephiroth took it away.
At first, Sephiroth preserved Cloud's awareness.
He could see Cloud's battle plan unfold, perceive the nerves of instinct and training fire. Sephiroth relished this glimpse of true precognition, reading his puppet's chosen intent.
...and overriding it when necessary.
But Cloud did not try to throw the match, even when allowed some freedom of movement.
Good boy.
Sephiroth lent more weight to Cloud's strikes, more speed to his footwork.
...he let himself feel the fight, as Cloud would. Let himself enjoy it.
...it was relaxing. To know this was, at least on the surface, a friendly contest. He didn't have that very often, anymore.
Cerberus speared Cloud with a pillar of darkness.
Pain and Panic hooted and whooped and flailed lit sparklers everywhere, shocking each other's butts, drawing in taunting smoketrails their master triumphant. It was not high art.
Hades's demons were irritating. Sephiroth touched the black wayfinder, sharp and cold against his chest, for patience and good luck.
"Still bitter for losing to Sora?" Hades said, around a mouthful of rotten crumbs.
"No." Sephiroth hadn't lost, not really.
"It's okay to admit it."
Sephiroth gave Hades the eye twitch he wanted.
"You will not help me, against the darkness?" he asked.
"No."
Cerberus's powerful frame displayed few weaknesses. Three independently moving heads, expelling heaving breaths of caustic darkness with each bite, effectively ruled out a frontal assault.
Sephiroth concentrated on avoiding the fireballs.
The outer necks should be a prime target, but Cloud's usual blade dash would not reach. Perhaps an uppercut? But then, the belly would be better.
There was room for Cloud to stand beneath Cerberus, but getting underneath the beast would be dangerous; he risked his piece being crushed by the gargantuan gray-taloned paws and the shockwaves of their tread. The rear legs, too, had claws.
Sephiroth chanced an approach from the side.
Cerberus whirled; its tail swept Cloud off his feet, and further. His body slumped against the broken seating ringing the arena.
Sephiroth made him get up, and the circling dance began again.
Sephiroth was fairly certain Hercules had punched Cerberus out. Did he want to make Cloud bludgeon Cerberus to death? The sword would be up to the task.
No, this was about sacrifice, gore and death gifted to the earth.
Blood needed to be spilled, life needed to be liquid, as it was in its ultimate essence a flowing cycle, the great principle he was destined to be.
Sephiroth let Cloud's life spill freely, in balance with Cerberus's. Upon inundating the ground they united as one.
Hades leaned into the action. As insufferable as Hades was, they shared this precious understanding.
Such bloodlust was the province of the divine, as Sephiroth understood it, as Mother had shown him, as had the battlefields and laboratories before that.
Cloud scored a hit on Cerberus's right forelimb, and another slice across the pad of its foot. Debris wormed itself into the wound. Cerberus began to limp and favor its other side.
...and intensified its ranged darkness volley attacks, dissuading Cloud's punishing advance.
Spheres of darkness shotgunned towards Cloud, each projectile homing in from above, while bottomless black pools opened below, tracking his every step, erupting skyward in geysering pillars of darkness, threatening to impale him again.
...if Cloud's pain had meant anything at all, the tactic would have worked.
Cloud could take it. Sephiroth spurred his puppet onward, Cloud's body soaking the hits, absorbing the darkness and its agony; the wing an ideal conduit, and the solution to this puzzle.
Sephiroth utilized the appendage the way Cloud never would, a flap of unearthly grace, to vault over the bulky barricade of gnashing yellowed teeth.
Cloud's sword plunged deep into Cerberus's back, but the thick, meaty knot of neck and shoulder muscles required to articulate three heads' worth of mastication deflected the spine-severing blow. It would take a different angle, or some sawing; a butchery Cerberus did not accommodate.
A mighty shake, and though Cloud's grip on fistfuls of shaggy hair held, whiplash from the rolls of loose skin flung him from his perch.
Cerberus chased, and caught Cloud's right leg in its middle mouth. There was a snap. Swung around like a ragdoll, Cloud's body went flying, and collided with a ruined wall formerly decorated with a frieze of lightly-armored warriors wielding spears.
Hades's demons gasped.
Sephiroth wondered if he should be concerned.
Exhaustion was setting in, the price of adrenaline and shock. The sun was blinding Cloud's eyes. Cerberus's advancing shadow smothered it.
Cerberus reared up...
If he didn't move Cloud's head, Cerberus was going to crush it.
Sephiroth teleported Cloud five Masamune-lengths away, behind, on top of a collapsed mouse-eared caryatid, and directed him to cast Thundaga.
Lightning struck true.
Cerberus's fur bristled and cracked, lolling tongues and crashing jaws spasmed.
Aqua watched the nightmarish twilight sky grow closer.
Hydraulics hissed; the ship's landing gear deployed.
The landscape was as blasted as Xehanort had left it.
A single structure stood, her Castle Oblivion, towers in a gaudy golden jumble, all odd angles, trimmed in turquoise. Aqua tried to excuse the castle's design as a reflection of her inner turmoil at the time, and reasoned it could have been worse.
No matter what she'd made, it could never measure up to the elegance of her memories of home.
Gales of remembrance howled at her in the inimical voice of the Darkness.
Take my keyblade and lock this land away.
Master's Defender weighed leaden in her hand, with grief, and with duty.
I won't let you down.
Words from another time.
What had become of Ven, in ten years? Did he wake up on his own, trapped in the maze none but she could solve, to starve or go mad... or emerge as Vanitas once more, half-heart of pure Darkness? Was he dead, wasted away, mummified in dust, all alone?
Terra and I will be back to wake you up before you know it.
...what had she done?
She'd wished for peace... and made emptiness. As silent and lonely as a grave, a mausoleum, a sleeping tomb of memory.
Inside, Castle Oblivion was imposing, its white chambers tall and unadorned.
Aqua kept Master's Defender at the ready. She could be walking into an ambush. Xehanort could be following her.
There were signs of past occupancy.
...someone had been littering. Playing cards cluttered the corridors, with portraits drawn on them, faces eerie in their realism.
The air hummed with a stale and awful magic, a memory-stealing kind, not quite dispelled. It was different from the maze-magic she'd employed in the castle's transformation.
Aqua refused to let it settle on her.
Each cautious step tested her determination.
Ven... oh please, be safe...!
She had to hurry.
This was the door that only she could find, that only she could open. The seal was undisturbed.
Aqua raised Master's Defender, and with the lightest of taps, her world heeded her command.
In the center of the room, Ven lay there, comatose, reclined on the white throne too large for him. Slouched in the same clothes, wearing his same big clunky shoes, face frozen in an absent frown.
He looked so young.
His skin was neither warm nor cold. His limbs were stiff, his eyes shut. Her magic confirmed the idea of life and breath. She knew he wasn't dead, simply locked in unresponsive, sleeping stasis. His heart was elsewhere.
Maybe if he heard her voice...
"Ven! How are you? It's so good to see you!"
He would've cringed at her awkwardness.
"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry I left you here, Ven. I never meant for this to happen. I never meant for it to be so long."
She rambled on, "You were brave and strong when we fought Xehanort and Vanitas. You saved the worlds as much as any of us. I shouldn't have underestimated you."
Ven's hand did not squeeze back.
Aqua tried again, "I remember... this used to cheer you up..."
With her keyblade, Aqua summoned the festive glow of fireworks. Flowery, blazing trails spread from white starbursts; pink, red, orange, green, and yellow.
The change of light only accentuated her friend's stillness. She found her cheerfulness was faked.
"You're... not really here, are you. You're far away in your head or in your heart somewhere. I hope you're not stuck all alone... like I was."
"Do you think, what I did was stupid? Not like it matters. You weren't there."
"I'm trying to be cheerful, I am... but I just can't. I wish you were awake to cheer me up."
"I believed in you, all this time."
...and where had it gotten her?
She raised her keyblade, and pointed it at him.
"Wake up already! Wake up, and say 'Good job Aqua' in that stupid sarcastic voice! Make it hurt again! I dare you!" Aqua's throat rasped with the pain of the shout.
"This isn't all your fault, but some of it sure is! Did you know? Did you know Xehanort was bad news? Were you scared, and couldn't tell us... or else...? Were you running away, not just following Terra, but away from all of us? Away from yourself, that half of yourself. Vanitas. Xehanort did that to you, didn't he? Did Eraqus let it happen? How far... how far back? And how could we not have noticed?"
Master's Defender quivered in her hand.
"We never suspected. Never! ..I never did. Did Terra? Did he choose Xehanort, even knowing...? Did I ever know him at all? Why didn't you tell me?"
"I didn't betray you! But you ran away! Why didn't you listen? And now it'll never be the same, we can't undo it!"
No!
...this was wrong, singling out Ven for her cruel catharsis!
Aqua lowered her keyblade. She didn't want to mean the things she'd said. Her rage, her helplessness, wouldn't break the spell. No darkness would.
"Maybe you should stay in your dreams, Ven. It isn't better, to feel nothing. But I wish I could bring you back to more than sadness. It's a whole new world out there. If we want a home to go to, we'll have to make it ourselves."
"You, and me, and Terra. Could we forgive each other? For everything?"
"We have to try, right?"
We have to try.
"I'm going after Xehanort. Don't worry, I'll have help. We'll put a stop to him, I know it! Can you... believe in me, too?"
Aqua wiped her eyes and nose on her sleeve. "I'm sorry I yelled at you. I shouldn't have."
"It's dangerous to leave the way open. I shouldn't have come. But I needed to see..."
"Was that selfish? Was it bad? If you can hear me at all..."
"...I missed you so much."
"I miss you so much, Ven."
What could she do?
Maybe she should put Ven somewhere else, in case something happened to her or Master's Defender.
Ven was smaller than her. She could carry him to the ship...
...and then what?
Ten years.
What if... Yen Sid couldn't be trusted?
Tears stiffened on her cheeks.
It was safer here.
Aqua sealed the chamber behind her, trying to keep her heart as unmoving as the stone.
Cloud's signature style was getting dull, and Hades's mutt had little new to offer either.
Sephiroth wondered...
...what would Master Aqua do to Cerberus?
If she were here, he'd be able to just watch. He could be surprised. He could hug her, when she won.
Writing the script was satisfying; he could make the choreography perfect. But there was something to be said for the authenticity of improvisation.
He tried not to offend with his boredom, but he could tell Hades noticed.
Hades tapped a spidery finger on his pauldron, "What's the matter with you? This used to be your favorite match."
Sephiroth recognized the smarmy invasion of personal space for the calculated misdirection it was, and interpreted the warning accordingly. Hades was not as clever as he imagined himself to be.
The ambient darkness writhed, bubbled, and spawned.
Heartless.
Each was a round, full globe, of diameter enough to engulf Cloud's height, black, with an oil-sheen skin membrane, a sickly rainbow straining inside. Floating, with three jagged appendages arranged equidistant on the spherical body, the resulting silhouette triangular and horned. Plastered on the front was an equally jagged neon blue grin and yellow eyes, like a face painted on a balloon.
They typically attacked with a gliding, wobbly tackle, a deceptively fast bodyslam.
Darkballs were trivial alone, but in large numbers their repeated strikes were difficult to recover from.
Hades had summoned thirty of them.
Sephiroth had intentionally left Cloud's defenses weak. The accumulated damage was severe.
The rapid sequence of hits would disable, potentially allowing Cerberus a coup de grace.
Well.
...did it count as Hades cheating if he expected it?
Sephiroth ordered Cloud's body to throw itself out of the way. The wing was in the wrong position; the dive, assisted by invisible force, would never be mistaken for natural motion, but that was unimportant.
Cloud's shoulder skidded hard, dislocated, friction-burned. Lungs robbed of air, the body rolled a passable distance, coming to rest face-down.
His piece's safety assured, Sephiroth swung Masamune in a supersonic arc, manifesting a chaining, explosive wave of energy. The kind that could make small asteroids go 'pop'.
...which is what the darkballs did, like firecrackers on a string.
"No fair," Hades pretended.
"You cheated first," Sephiroth pointed out.
Cerberus's three heads hit the ground, one after another. It was musical.
Pain and Panic's cheers deflated.
"Oh come on," Hades whined.
"What was it you said, before?" Sephiroth smirked, "Ah yes, 'Accidents happen.'"
Hades swore uproariously and hurried to tend to his fallen beast. With loving care, shadowy claws reattached prodigal heads to stumps, gurgling resolved to labored panting. Cerberus rose and shook the blood from its rippling black hide like rain. Hale and healthy once more, three licking tongues drenched Hades in a storm of slobber.
Sephiroth made Cloud stand up, brush the sand from his clothes, and twirl his sword above his head in a victory pose.
"Fine, fine, you win this round," Hades sputtered. "But next time..."
There... probably wasn't going to be a next time.
...that's what he always promised himself. And yet...
"You'll bring stronger heartless?" Sephiroth joked.
"I might."
There wouldn't be any heartless left. Hades would have to find a new trick.
"Alright. I look forward to it," Sephiroth said.
He accepted Hades's drool-covered handshake, and wiped his glove on Cloud's tattered coat.
Cloud was in critical condition. His eyes were dim, his face ashen, his flesh torn. Cerberus's fangs had skewered him a neat line of punctures spanning his torso, like the perforations between postage stamps. The wounds were beginning to heal, oh so slowly. Sephiroth did nothing to hasten the process. Already, no internal organs were visible.
It would suffice.
...he should remove some of Cloud's darkness, to be certain.
Hades peeled his eyes from the aftermath of the spectacle. "Oh?"
"What?"
"Here comes another one of your pets."
Sephiroth followed Hades's gaze, "She's not a pet."
...how were they all anything but pets to him?
By his decision, of course.
They all had the potential to be. Just like they all had the potential to be a smear on the ground. He'd always had the option of lethality.
But there were many he did not kill, and many he did not enslave. Comparatively few deaths were attributable to him these days. It was rude of Hades to assume...
Or... perhaps it was justified. Recent chocolate notwithstanding, he was not the type of angel to deliver love letters.
There was no way he could convince anyone of his sincerity, let alone Hades.
"I have other plans for her."
Hades leered.
"Shut up. Not that kind of plan."
"Huh," Hades stroked his vulgar chin, "Didn't figure you were into that sacrificial virgin stuff."
Sephiroth glared.
...sacrifice? He did not need...! ...he hadn't devised a formal ritual for that yet.
...or was there? Yes, outside of combat, there were certain things he did as a prelude to them offering themselves to him.
He was a personal god, he kept no priests, but that didn't mean there wasn't ...tradition.
Usually, one stab was enough.
That moment of shock, horror, betrayal... mortality.
And he could look down at them, helpless on his sword, and smile, and look through them, and inside them, and follow that fear into their mind.
An entire life in an instant, an instant that lasted as long as he could make it, a brief instant for him to chronicle what was important before it slipped away.
At the end, he rarely bothered to taunt or goad. He only had to wait. To watch them die from inside out. Sometimes people were more willing to beg to an indifferent force than a malevolent one. He wanted them to beg.
Their pleas could be for anything. Anything. But he would accept always the same exchange, the same promise.
Death, and within him, salvation. Another mote of spirit energy to add to his collection.
A private concern. His attention belonged elsewhere.
...what was Master Aqua to him?
It was none of Hades's business! The question was poisonous, and he should not...
She was...
...a vitality he did not want to destroy. Only to witness. Beauty in her movements. A brilliant light, a vivid soul.
...was she hurt? He hadn't expected her so soon. Did she need his help?
She couldn't be his Second if he would not command her. That required a military hierarchy she did not subscribe to.
He could not be her Master without a keyblade...
She was...
...soft and warm to hold. He took pleasure in her thriving. In her tricks. In her affection...
...maybe Hades was right, and he did think of her as a pet. A pet one is a little guilty to have. A creature that ought not to be domesticated, housed in a terrarium, respectfully hands-off. Taken care of, but not free.
But his presence deprived Master Aqua of nothing! He was not possessive to her detriment! It would defeat the purpose! Heh. Her purpose was to not be his pet!
...her purpose was to be his friend and ally, as Zack had been, so he could prove he could (still) have such a thing. Like everything else, she was a tool for his pride.
But he cared more than that. He did!
He did.
Sephiroth picked a bundle of neurons to strangle and made Cloud crumple in on himself.
Hades laughed. "Your eyes are really pretty when you're mad, anyone ever tell you that?"
"No."
If someone had, he would have killed them.
Aqua stepped from the gummi ship. Well... the loading ramp didn't reach all the way to the bottom, so it was more of a hop.
The readings from the instruments hadn't prepared her for the desolation Olympus Coliseum had become. What had happened here?
She smelled violence, and blood, and darkness.
She saw two figures, unmistakable. Sephiroth and Hades were... arguing? in the distance. Conversing. Laughing. Viewing some sort of entertainment? A battle, between Cloud and Cerberus, recently concluded.
...it was not what she'd expected. She'd hoped for...
Hades should be on his knees (if he had any), at swordpoint, blubbering to her savior all the truths she needed to know to get to Xehanort, bleeding out all the secrets of the Darkness.
Hades raucously tossed popcorn over his shoulder. Sephiroth was smiling. He held his wing close at his side, relaxed. He'd probably look good in a toga. Shut up, Aqua.
...it was not a nice smile.
Aqua watched as Sephiroth, with a lazy flick of his wrist, opened a portal into Darkness; as Cloud, covered in ghastly injuries, got up and stumbled nearer to it; and as Sephiroth placed a palm on Cloud's chest and seemed to draw the darkness out of him and grow stronger.
She overheard, "Oh, Cloud, you forget! I am capable of all things, even mercy! Go back to Tifa! See if your Light can piece you back together this time!"
Sephiroth cackled and brutally shoved Cloud through the portal.
Then he was striding towards her, as if nothing had ever been wrong, and any comfort she'd hoped to glean from seeing him again melted away.
If his persona as a villain was an act, it was perfect; at least as perfect as his love for her had been.
She'd been desperate to accept Sephiroth's help, hadn't she? Really, truly desperate. Lost. In Darkness, of spirit and of soul.
Hades shouted in waggling disgust, "Don't tell me it's looooove."
Sephiroth answered without stopping, one hand raised, dismissive, "Love is powerful."
Hades snorted, "Don't come crying to me when you get burned!"
"I won't."
Sephiroth stood before her. He had the warmest smile for her safe arrival, and considerable curiosity for the gummi ship. Aqua wanted not to stare at the blood on his hands.
She spoke first.
"Yen Sid is alive, and I know where he is. Let's go."