Hello everyone, and welcome to chapter 18 of Before KH: Shadows!
Creativity: Sorry about the late upload, but the internet was misbehaving for last Sunday.
Author: But we're here today, and not being forced to put this off for another week! Again!
We're getting close to the end of this whole set now. Counting this chapter, I think we have about five more left before we go on break to work on other stuff and start plotting out the second half. Or third. However it shakes out, I guess.
Creativity: If you want to keep up with our ever-shifting plans and announcements, hop over to our Discord server! There, you can chat with us and other readers about all number of things, as well as keep up to date with what we're doing! The password to join is right here: 5RRcGwh
Author: Thank you, Creativity! Now then, let us begin.
Allow us to proudly present chapter 18 of Before Kingdom Hearts: Shadows!
"You want to do what?!"
Veris, despite having heard the queen's words as clear as a bell, had about the same reaction to them that Barkos was having. The queen took a deep breath before she continued speaking.
"According to Gourken, the only solution to save your friend is to enter his mind via ritual and locate the curse at its source to lift it. Given everything we've learned about the nature of this curse, I have to agree with his assessment." She repeated.
"Okay, first off, how?! Second, that sounds extremely dangerous!" Barkos exclaimed. The queen sighed as she closed her eyes, rubbing her right temple.
"We don't have time to explain the ritual, but I can say that yes, it is dangerous; both to the mind being entered, and those entering it. Unfortunately, we don't have other options. The longer we wait, the more damage the curse does to Ryo, both directly and indirectly." She elaborated before waiting for the next question.
"Why are you telling us this?" Veris asked, cutting off Barkos before he could press for more details. "If you know what you need to do, why come to us about it?"
The queen looked at them all with an odd expression that was equal parts grim and sympathetic.
"The ritual only works if given explicit consent by the one whose mind is being entered, or a surrogate if that individual is incapable of offering consent themselves." The queen explained before continuing on to what she believed would be the worst part of it all. "What's more, you will not be able to enter your friend's mind with me and Gourken. The nature of the ritual does not allow those providing surrogate consent to enter the mind, nor would I allow any of you to join us."
Immediately there were protests from all three teens, only for the queen to silence them with a raised hand.
"Entering the mind of an individual is precarious under the best of circumstances. To alleviate a curse of the mind, especially one as unknown and vicious as this one? You would be only be a liability. I'm sorry, but either way you must remain out here while me and Gourken clean up this mess."
They weren't happy about it, that much was obvious to the queen. She couldn't blame them. If she was in the same position with the King or any of the magicians in her charge, she'd be as incensed about being sidelined as they were. Unfortunately, that didn't change the fact that they couldn't be allowed to enter their friend's mind. Frankly, she wasn't even sure if she herself should be entering the boy's mind. However, she couldn't let Gourken go alone, both for safety's sake and because for all his knowledge of the mind and the dangers of tampering with it, she didn't trust the man alone in the mind of someone like Ryo. While neither of them had said it outright, they (and more than a few of the other magicians probably) knew that Ryo was special, and Gourken would be tempted by that. Not to do harm, but to learn. Nonetheless, it would be without Ryo's consent and it could be dangerous to all parties involved if Gourken stuck his nose somewhere he shouldn't.
"Alright, I'm in." The largest one answered, Garren she recalled. Well, that was one of them down and two remaining.
"It doesn't sound like we have much of a choice… Alright, I'm game." Barkos decided. That left only one.
"…You're sure this is the only option?" Veris questioned. The queen frowned. Technically, the answer was no. Practically…
"This is the best shot we have, and the odds are better the sooner we begin."
Veris took a deep breath before she steeled herself.
"Alright… Let's do this."
Opinions quickly threatened to change when they entered the room Ryo was being housed in to see Gourken was already well into setting up for the ritual. He'd scrawled the runes onto the floor with practiced precision and left several small crystals deposited about the magic circle.
"Ah good, we're almost ready to begin! Just a moment and we'll be ready." He greeted as he finished up the last rune.
"I thought we weren't doing this without our permission!" Barkos exclaimed hotly as he glared back and forth between the queen and Gourken. Luckily, Veris was quick to interject.
"I've known Gourken for less than five minutes, but the impression I get it is that he doesn't wait for permission from… anyone. Besides, the ritual wouldn't work without our explicit consent, so he wouldn't have been able to do anything anyway." She assured Garren and Barkos, who did look mollified to a point, but still were glaring distrustfully at Gourken. The wizard, for his part, didn't look all that phased as he finished the last few touches and rose to his feet, clapping his hands together.
"Alright, we're just about ready to begin. There's just one last thing to do!" He declared before he strode over to the trio before he flicked his wrist, drawing what looked like a silver sewing needle seemingly from thin air.
"Now then, one at a time, offer your hand please!" He requested, much to the surprise and reluctance of the teens. He frowned a little.
"Come on now, it's just a little finger prick. You want to save your friend; this is how it's done. Hands, now!" He barked. Garren's face scrunched up a bit before he reluctantly outstretched his hand. Gourken grabbed it and turned the palm upwards, making sure to hold the middle finger in place.
"Now then, repeat after me: 'I, (your name here), do attest that I offer my blood of my own free will, as permission to enter the mind of my friend.' Oh, and speak clearly!" Gourken instructed. Garren repeated the words in as clear a voice he could. As he finished the words, Gourken lowered the needle and pricked Garren's finger, holding it inside long enough for a large drop of blood to form around it. As he lifted it free, the blood drop clung to the needle and Gourken carefully manuevered it over to the magic circle and allowed the blood drop to fall into one of the empty circles at the edge.
"Alright, next! Swiftly, swiftly if you will!" He called as he produced a fresh needle. Barkos was the next to offer, repeating the phrase and wincing a bit as Gourken stuck the needle into his finger. Gourken let the blood drop next to first, then produced a third needle and made his way to Veris, who reluctantly offered her hand to the old man, said the words and gritted her teeth through getting her finger pricked. With that, the final drop of blood was added and Gourken motioned to Queen Arryn to join him as he waved his hands in the air, causing waving threads of green energy to appear around Ryo's body and gently lift him from the cot he was lying on into the center of the magic circle. From there, Gourken and the queen each took seats opposite each other on Ryo's left and right respectively, within small areas marked out on the edge of the magic circle.
"Now then, everyone stand back and do not allow anything to disturb myself, the queen, or your friend. This is difficult work, and we don't need it to be made more difficult by the magic circle being damaged, or by our bodies being jostled." Gourken warned.
"Why aren't we calling the guards or other magicians to help with that?" Veris questioned as Gourken and the queen took their seats.
"The less people present, the better." Gourken responded, and neither himself nor the queen seemed inclined to elaborate further. Instead, they sat cross-legged in their respective circles and closed their eyes. Then as one, they began to chant.
None of the three teens could understand the language, though that quickly became an afterthought as the entire magic circle lit up purple and all three were wrapped in a similarly colored aura and gently lifted off the ground! There was a rush of air, then everything calmed. Gourken, Queen Arryn and Ryo were still floating and glowing purple, though it seemed to have softened a little.
"Alright, I guess all we can do now is wait…" Veris murmured as the three friends watched. What happened now was in the queen and the old wizard's hands.
Gourken had warned her previously that the process of leaving your own body to enter the mind of another was an incredibly disorienting process, but she had greatly underestimated his warning. Not long after completing the incantation, her senses had gone into complete disarray. No longer could she taste or smell the air of the room,feel gravity pulling her down or even her own chest rising and falling with every breath! She wasn't even sure she was breathing anymore!
Luckily, Gourken had reminded her of this, and she managed to forestall a panic attack.
"Alright, we're good. Open your eyes."
Gourken's voice echoed through her ears, though it didn't feel like 'hearing' in the conventional sense. Still, she wasn't about to complain about having some sort of sensory feedback and did as he instructed.
The sight awaiting her was not what she expected. Herself and Gourken were currently floating above a small, floating island of earth, barren of life. There wasn't even so much as a pebble in sight, though you wouldn't notice for all the strangeness around the island.
"A mind should definitely not look like this…" Gourken muttered grimly, and despite not having a frame of reference, Queen Arryn wholeheartedly agreed.
Ryo's mind could best be described as a chaotic mess. Large chunks of buildings and landscapes floated in the space surrounding them without any rhyme or reason, some flipped around so as to be upside down. Large chunks of it looked to be, for lack of a better term, corrupted; chunks cleanly cut away or warped and stretched like taffy. All around them were what looked like translucent streams of purple energy, rushing like wind currents.
"Well, the curse certainly made things worse, but this kid has been sitting on some really nasty stuff. It's like his very foundations have been torn from the ground and turned inside out and upside down, and that's before they got smashed into little pieces." Gourken observed as he scanned their surroundings, looking for something.
"So, are we already too late?" The queen asked with concern.
"Hah, no! It just means the kid's perception of himself is shot to hell. No wonder his magic is in flux like you said!" He began explaining. "Once we take care of the curse, his mind can at least organize itself enough for him to wake up. Still, until he sorts out whatever this mess is, he can forget about summoning so much as a spark of magic!"
Queen Arryn felt a little relieved, though it was very brief. They still had a job to do, after all.
"Alright, where do we go from here?"
"Don't you think we'd be going there if I knew that already?"
The queen didn't appreciate the response, but she held her tongue. Gourken's energy was better spent figuring out where they needed to go than on coming up with barbs to throw her way. Not that it made any difference, since he kept talking.
"A mind in disarray like this is extremely hard to navigate and very prone to lashing out if we prod in the wrong place, never mind what the curse might throw at us if it's sophisticated enough, and I'm assuming it its." Gourken continued to lecture before he paused. "Or if we prod it in the right place…" He muttered. The queen didn't like his tone; it sounded like he'd hit on an idea that was going to make things very difficult. Unfortunately, it was too late to stop him as the old wizard launched himself from the dirt platform they'd been standing on and floated in a straight line to what looked like the fractured remains of an old palace of some kind. Left without any other options, the queen went to follow him before realizing that she didn't actually know how to. Luckily, Gourken seemed to remember.
"Just jump in the direction you want to go and keep your focus on the destination!" He called back. "This is the mind, not reality!"
"Mind of matter." The queen reminded herself as she lightly hopped after Gourken and sailed gently through the air, uninterrupted. It felt unnatural that she could feel her motion, but no air pushing back on her as she moved; not even a whistle of wind in her ears.
"Alright, what are you doing?" She asked as she touched down next to Gourken, who was examining their surroundings. Taking a closer look, they appeared to be on some sort of garden terrace, similar to those in the queen's own palace, though this one was far grander, with a majestic marble fountain and the center. Unfortunately, this place was also plagued with the unnatural damage and warping, ruining its otherwise beautiful appearance. Most notably, there were several ornate stone pedestals and even the top of the fountain were all sporting what looked like statues, but they all appeared to be frozen in place while exploding, wish some of the pieces warping like soft candy while others were sprouting sharp shards of black stone.
"Well, all these places have some sort of personal significance to our poor cursed patient, but something happened to reframe his view of them. And since he's probably been tamping them down as far as he can instead of processing them, when the curse dragged them out and forced him to relive them on loop without end, they've ended up like… well, like this." Gourken lectured before he began wandering over to the fountain. "Of course, since the curse has been bringing these up, that means it has to have some presence here. So, all we need to do is break its connection to this place and it should give us a path to follow! And to do that…"
Gourken raised his finger and short a small orange bolt from his fingertips at the center status, hitting one of the spiked stone shards, which immediately caused the whole terrace to begin to shudder and shake!
"Gourken, what have you done?!" The queen shouted as she fought to keep her balance.
"I made a little noise! Now we wait for something to come running!" He called back before a distorted shriek suddenly tore through the air! All of a sudden, what looked like roots of some kind began to erupted from the empty space within the fountain statue, coiling in and around the broken shards before reaching into the stone beneath. Running in traces along the roots were small strands of crimson light. They were eerily familiar to the queen, and she imagined her partner felt the same.
"I was not expecting that." Gourken commented with concern as he backed away from statue and prepared an Aerora spell as a precaution.
"Gourken, when we get out of here, I am going to execute you myself." Queen Arryn growled as lightning began to gather in her right hand.
Suddenly, black dust began to emerge from the roots as a fog before it coalesced together into five vaguely human forms. The familiar colors appeared on the forms to give their otherwise blank faces features and to help give definition to their shapes, but this only emphasized that they weren't quite right. Nonetheless, the queen could only feel danger emanating from them; something that only became greater as weapons snapped into their hands from nothingness.
Each of the phantoms' weapons were different and all stylized. The tallest one was holding what looked like a massive great-sword, though it looked to function more as a club, with no sharp edge. The shortest was wielding what appeared to be a double-bladed short-sword. The remaining three, of approximately the same height, wielded clawed gauntlets, a long, curved blade with a wing-shaped guard, and a halberd respectively. The weapons flickered, small strands of the black dust they were composed of being tugged this way and that by some phantom wind or string.
"Well, I can safely say that this is the curse's actions. It must be drawing on Ryo's memories to create these… things." Gourken guessed as the five entities stood there, staring at them.
"What are they doing? They aren't even moving." Queen Arryn muttered, not taking her eyes off them, not letting go of her spell.
"I'm not sure…" Gourken began to say, only to be interrupted as the clawed phantom suddenly lurched forward and rushed towards Gourken! The old man, for his part, responded immediately with launching his Aerora spell at the phantom, sending it flying back with a distorted shriek of surprise! The halberd and the sword phantoms both rushed forward, the former rushing Gourken and the latter gunning for Queen Arryn, who responded with a stream of lightning bolts! The bolts struck the phantom dead on, sending it tumbling backwards and bursting into nothing!
"One down…" The queen counted as she turned her attention back to the others. Gourken and erected several barriers made of ice to slow the advance of the other phantoms and had the halberd phantom caught up in a twister, though that only succeeded in drawing the attention of the giant phantom, who rushed forward with its club and effortlessly smashed through the barriers. Unfortunately for said phantom, Gourken was waiting for it with a Blizzaga, which flash-froze the phantom before it crumbled to nothing.
"Two down… wait!"
Even as the double-blade and the claw phantoms both began stalking towards the two magicians, and the halberd phantom managed to break free from its prison, Gourken and Queen Arryn both saw familiar black dust collecting near the root cluster, quickly taking on the familiar forms of the two phantoms they had just eradicated.
"Okay, killing them isn't working." Gourken noted, sounding more annoyed than concerned. The queen merely growled as she unleashed another stream of lightning bolts from her fingers, forcing the claw phantom back as it let out a rattling noise in response.
"Well then, what would work?" She hissed as she began to gather a blazing flame around her left hand, with wind whirling around her right.
"Well, at a guess…" He started before he launched a salvo of icicles from his palm towards the phantoms, who blocked them with their weapons. "We clear the garden by pulling this weed up by the roots!"
With that, Gourken launched yet another salvo of icicles at the phantoms, then followed it up with three plasma balls! The queen seized on the distraction and clasped her hands together with her index and middle fingers extended to point at the phantoms, unleashed a blazing vortex towards the phantoms! With attacks coming in on all sides, the phantoms couldn't respond and were blasted to dust, leaving the roots unguarded, though they wouldn't be for long; the phantoms were already regenerating.
Fortunately, Gourken was already on top of things and had formed a Firaza bolt on his finger-tip, which he then launched like an arrow at the root cluster! The effect was instantaneous, with a familiar, ear-wrenching shriek cutting through the air like a knife scratching glass. The vines began to twist and contort unnaturally before they all suddenly began to pull back in on themselves and vanishing into thin air.
The queen just stared as a sudden silence spread over their surroundings.
"Did… Did we win?" She asked Gourken, who frowned.
"I think so, but I'm not positive." He replied. Then, the ground started to shake, though not nearly as violently as before. Before their very eyes, the statues and warped earth began to shift. While it obviously wasn't reconstituted to whatever it was supposed to look like before, it didn't look nearly as bad as before. The ground was mostly level and uncorrupted, and the spikes jutting out of the broken statue fragments faded away, leaving the stone fragments looking like they could fit together properly again. What's more, the fragments seemed to be shifting back together enough to get a sense of what they were supposed to be.
"Wait… Are those…?" Gourken asked as he peered at the statues. Looking closer, the queen realized what he was talking about.
"All of them have wings…" She murmured. Feathered, leathery, a mix between the two, every statue had a set of wings of some kind.
"This place is a memory of a real place, right?" Queen Arryn asked Gourken, who nodded. The two magicians were now very concerned. Ever since the war with the winged folk, humans hadn't made a single statue of a winged humanoid, and these did not look like any of the old ruins the winged folk had left behind. For some of Ryo's most important memories to feature such statues so prominently carried many implications that neither magician was keen to consider.
"Gourken, when we're finished here, we aren't speaking a word of this to anyone." Arryn declared with a low voice and a grim look. Gourken nodded silently. Hopefully, the statues wouldn't mean much. However, Ryo's odd magic and cagey behaviour about what had led to his inability to use it, coupled with what they were now seeing in his memories definitely hinted that Ryo had some sort of connection to them, putting it mildly.
Well, there was nothing to be done about it now. They were in this, and they had a job to do.
"Alright, where do we go next?" the queen asked Gourken, who gave an annoying smirk in response.
"Well, like I said, we make some noise and the curse comes to us. And when it runs away, it leaves a trail. Just follow me and we'll be done by dinner." He answered before he scanned the horizon and picking out another location and launching into the air. With a resigned growl, Queen Arryn leapt after him, sailing through Ryo's subconscious in pursuit of the old wizard.
Still, her annoyance failed to distract her from a lingering concern; With what they'd found already, what else were they going to find out?
And that's the end of chapter 18!
Creativity: Seriously, why are we still pretending. People saw this coming a mile away.
Author: We're fine. That's not the detail that matters.
So, it's kind of late and we're running on empty right now, so we'll be cutting the closing notes short this week.
Thank you for reading, please review, hope to see you on Discord, and we'll see you next week!