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CHAPTER 40:
NEGOTIATIONS WITH THE HERALD OF NOTHINGNESS
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Author's Notes: The composition for this Chapter is: 'Testament,' from the XENOSAGA Episode Three Original Sound Best Tracks, Disc Two. This music can be found in KINGDOM HEARTS Insider's MP3 section.
Sora solely knew what feeling and thinking were because there wasn't even any kind of a lack of awareness now.
There was nothing of any fashion, definable or indefinable, present or empty, now.
Everything was empty and calm and stark and quiet.
A labyrinth of crystalline fractures and shatterpoints appeared to extend out never anywhere about him and within him, but he couldn't even tell if there was black glass sand where a Station of Awakening and a heart might have been in anyone else.
But he knew he had a heart, and it was real.
He simply couldn't feel anything other than off faintly glaring and stark disjointed shifted to the side of even sides impressions of an eternally and boundless absent and numb pressure, as he drifted alone in the vacuum of a forever void.
And a practically giddy almost hysteria assuming even consumption everywhere around and about and upon and inside him.
So you've at last come far enough to understand.
Every light doesn't just fade; it shines your way down a path of hallucinations that show you how to abandon the people you love most, and everyone else, to return to darkness.
Look as far as you are able.
You'll not find even the barest glimmer of hope.
"Sora, you don't believe that. I know you don't."
"Dreams don't need to be based upon reality! They can be based upon your imagination as well!
"If they couldn't be, they wouldn't be called dreams!
"So you don't need to stop trusting in them!
"Keep living through them, for the people who you love and for the world that you dream of, and keep trying to love those people, and everyone else, and bring about that world!
"So you can still hold onto, and not let go of, your dreams to the very end!
"Whether you can or you can't create a better world, as long as you keep believing in your dreams and striving to grasp them, you can give people enough hope to keep their eyes on the world that you imagine.
"And you can still connect them to the sanctuary of your love and warmth and kindness and brilliance; and the warmer, kinder, more joyful, laughter filled world that you dream of!"
Something flickered, faint and distant, inside Sora.
It was guttering, but there was a certain determination in it that told Sora he most likely would have been entirely aware it was real regardless of how he was comprehending reality, and his heart.
No. Not this time.
Not unle
He was not going to give up hope this time.
Most of all, not in love and friendship and acceptance and connections.
No other sentiment returned, but Sora pushed himself to his feet.
"There's no time," Sora was surprised to discover his voice was much steadier than he'd believed it could once more be until the afterlife or eternity ceased or continued to unfold.
"Rapunzel, can you let out enough of your light it may alert the Xehanorts you're here?"
Rapunzel's eyes opened a little.
"What do you have in mi…
"Forget it. I trust you know what you're doing."
For an unknown reason, Rapunzel's faith in him caused a little but genuinely noticeable vitality and assurance to rise inside Sora.
Faint, rippling curtains of light rushed out from around Rapunzel to glimmer around her as though they were drapes around a pedestal.
After several seconds, they dispersed.
Almost before they were gone, an oblate morass of blacks and violets burgeoned before them in front of the familiar flower pod with its petals unfolded wide; and Young Xehanort stepped out, without Terra-Xehanort hovering behind him as a familiar but No Name in its regular metal and energy arrangement in his hand.
Childhood's Laughter coalesced in Sora's hand.
Rapunzel moved to the side, taking a frying pan out of the left side of her belt and moving it to a neutral guard position more partially in front of Sora than herself; but otherwise appearing to know better than to interfere in a discussion of this type unless it was truly necessary.
The giddy near hysteria moved to the sides of Sora's perception without him even needing to push it there.
Young Xehanort's brow furrowed for a number of seconds as he took in the sight before him.
Then he smiled in mocking amusement, clearly having realized what was unfolding.
"After everything you'd told my selves so many times, throughout strife after struggle, torment after adversity; about how I wasn't constrained by my destiny and darkness and I was wrong to seek to give hearts contentment by controlling the fate of the night, but joy is to be found by accepting darkness and the World for what it is and then changing it by searching for the light within it; now you're as inextricably tied as I have been from the instant I was first called to the future."
"There's a difference between breaking promises, and changing destiny," Sora responded, but he couldn't even tell if there was any conviction in his voice, far less be sure he had any to call into it.
"We have no say in how the tides of destiny surge. We do have a say in what we dream of doing about it.
"We change destiny through our dreams, by staying true to the promises we've made to each other, and one another, and ourselves.
"If we break our promises, we can't change destiny.
Young Xehanort just smirked as though Sora was missing something even more blindingly obvious than usual.
"Are you sure this is the best time for this? There's no question it's not too late for the realm of light this time, yes.
"But the longer you wait, the less time four of the six remaining people who are the most important to you will have to descend into darkness once more, this time perhaps surpassing salvation.
"While I haven't uncovered or discerned all the particulars, I know this much.
"The stage is now set, and it's time for you to act out your part, but you don't yet know the lines you're required to choose how to ad lib.
"But you're at long last about to learn why all hearts inevitably and inexorably return to darkness.
"For soon, so very soon, it will at last be time for Maleficent to play the part she has rehearsed from the first instant my true self told her about the Princesses of Heart; and Christopher Peregrine Robin will recite his act."
"In the end, no matter how bright the light is, the onyx black night will always devour all colors."
"Are you willing to accept my testament now, or do you need another demonstration?"
Sora didn't know whether he pushed the reminiscence away, or the new tears causing his eyes to burn erased it.
But he shook his head slightly to literally shake off the tidal wave of suffocating submerging anguish and self hatred.
"It will be a theatrical production of an inscribed choice between pragmatic necessity and the forsaking of all who you love; and the flight of the veil upon the incontrovertible destiny Maleficent has unknowingly etched for him upon the day she, herself, at last opens the door to Kingdom Hearts," Young Xehanort went on.
"I didn't promise you to murder him either, if that's why you're telling me this," Sora responded, and this time he could tell there was a pained, despairing edge in his voice.
Young Xehanort just shook his head.
"Do you honestly believe you can protect Kairi, Riku, Roxas, and Anna, and everyone and everything else you love, from a living Station of Awakening; while continuing to believe you will not one day see that choice before you?
"Or would you prefer to condemn one of them to do it?"
Rapunzel's face shifted a small amount, and her mouth began to open.
But she stopped it from doing so before it could part, and compressed her lips.
For an unknown reason, even with the concepts of not there gone; reality still shifted.
All that Sora could understand as real or not real or anything in between or a coagulation of one or more encompassments was an indefinable abyss of a broken chasm between reality and his perception; where everything was walled safely away from all feeling and thought, and time and awareness and expression and space themselves had no meaning, or potentiality, or lack of meaning, of any of.
Then he knew awareness once more.
"Anna considered it when things got really ugly."
The emptiness where Jiminy had once been manifested.
Then it was gone.
"But I refuse to believe, if it actually comes down to it, even you, or Yozora, would go through with it as anything other than friendly fire, or a collateral casualty."
Sora felt slightly lighter beyond doubt to see sincere uncertainty pass distantly behind Young Xehanort's eyes.
"KYou diminish my dignity."
Young Xehanort sounded extremely affronted; but Sora heard clearly who's name Young Xehanort had actually been uncomfortable enough to begin to say, and who he genuinely wanted to know he wasn't sure he was willing to go that far.
A large amount of the numbness faded, new tears pushed into his burning eyes, but his perception didn't alter.
"I can assure you; doing the deed with my own hands, through any way but collateral murder or friendly fire, is entirely beneath me."
In countless ways, that meant sensations Sora couldn't express or encompass.
In innumerable ways, it made no difference.
"But it isn't the inescapable need you will in time face, to choose between necessity and abandoning everyone and everything you love that still allows the light to blind you.
"Even though Maleficent has yet to learn the nature of true darkness as much as you; the Mistress of All Evil who believes in nothing but selfish darkness as an atonement for faith in the delusions of warm light has, as Christopher repeatedly reminded you of, many less compunctions than I do.
"But you won't remain ignorant of the abyssal foundations of darkness for much longer.
"For you will confront your choice when you learn what the most devout believers in the darkness or light are willing to deceive innocent children into kindling, at what cost, and how Maleficent intends to harness this to cast her New World upon the totality of the stellar tapestry; and the torment a Station of Awakening can condemn its victims to if it sends them into the past."
Rapunzel's whole body shifted now, blood draining from her face.
She appeared to want to ask if Christopher was the child.
A combination of guilt and relief surged through Sora that she didn't.
Uneasy terror at what Young Xehanort might be referring to caused Sora's insides to knot a small amount.
But he shook his head slightly once more.
He couldn't afford to worry about this.
Not after Jiminy had died while he'd given up, and he'd done nothing but lay there unconscious on the floor and done nothing at all whatsoever to keep it from happening.
He pushed aside the sick uncertainty just twisting his stomach now.
He knew very well how much of a very big mistake it was to let a Xehanort talk over him; and while he hadn't given up as he had when he'd let Jiminy die and he'd protected Kairi as soon as he'd discovered he was the Kye-Blade, he hadn't been able to cope with the mysteries of the World Ursula and Hans, and Young Xehanort and Terra-Xehanort, knew as well as he'd believed he'd been capable of doing; but there couldn't be any question this answer he hadn't yet unlocked could hurt him that much more than he'd already been hurt, if at all.
There was little to no way the darkness could cascade much deeper.
And even if he couldn't take the solution to this mystery, if he could do this, Kairi almost certainly would be able to.
Her smiles and laughter and scrapes and tears were all that mattered.
Not his own.
"You didn't just make a fool of yourself because you're scared that I'll die, too," Donald said warningly.
Sora ignored Kairi's, Riku's, and Goofy's concerned looks, and met Donald's angry glare.
"They're Darkballs," Sora defended himself.
"I can afford to be careless."
"Who says that I want you overly taking care of me?" Donald snarled.
Sora understood what Donald meant, and he ached everywhere once again.
He pushed it away.
"All right, I'm sorry," he said.
"If someone is actually willing to suffer or die for another, or for others, or for a location, small or large, that makes the sacrifice more terrible, not better.
"Because then you aren't caring about how much the people who love you don't want you to be hurt, or even about yourself."
Something a little larger flickered through Sora, but he still couldn't identify it.
Sora didn't understand why he was remembering these things, but that wasn't important at this time.
The Foretellers, and Dreamreapers; weren't Darkballs.
If he let his misgivings and doubts drag him down; Kairi and Riku and Roxas and Anna, and perhaps Donald and Goofy as well; might not just lose their hearts or give into the darkness of their own free choice, once more or for the first time.
They might die this time, indelibly and endlessly.
And even if Kairi and Anna didn't, what future did they have to look forward to?
To live by letting someone else die from all being in their place?
Futile helpless powerlessness caused most of Sora to give, and his legs almost collapsed; as a potently sharp and aching desperate and frustrated sensation of how completely and entirely pointless and senseless and meaningless and self defeating this now was nearly brimmed over inside him.
However, he suppressed the urge to clench his hands into fists or clench his teeth.
Kairi needed him to reach her older brother and younger brother.
Nothing else mattered.
"Do you and your selves even know how to carry on a regular conversation?" he partially cried, not caring about how few reasons he saw to keep his desperate frustration and traces of true anger contained.
"Stop congratulating yourselves for how brilliant a circle of scholars you believe you are and talk without riddles, for the first time since you gave into the darkness?
"Particularly after how you many times you've gone on and on about how you six alone are the sole people who comprehend the depths of darkness, and the rest of us are nothing but ignorant dunces incapable of beholding its majesty.
"You, most of all; refuse to pay a single passing glance to anything but the shadows.
"You have as much to lose as we do if the Foretellers are the ones to open the door and keep it open.
"Why, even now, won't you just tell me what Maleficent wants with Christopher?
"And you said it yourself.
"Yozora is attempting to murder Kairi, and a lot more than that.
"Why have we been fighting so hard and so long, repeatedly murdering hurting each other and one another, continually breaking and grinding each other and one another down, for all these years, for well over a decade by now; when what we've both been fighting for the most for all this time, and through all these tears, is how to ensure she keeps smiling and laughing?"
Something passed over Young Xehanort's face for several seconds.
All of the numbness disappeared, and Sora couldn't breathe.
For the first time since; in order to increase their chances of defeating Xehanort's three deadliest other selves at the same time by forcing them to confront opponents they were less experienced in combating, Sora had beaten Young Xehanort himself, Riku had put most of his efforts into ending their conflict with Xemnas, and Mickey had been the one to deliver the final strike to Xehanort's Heartless; genuine emotion manifested in Young Xehanort's face.
He laughed once, harshly and mockingly.
But Sora refused to be deterred, and he plunged on before Young Xehanort could say anything else.
"We both want the same thing, so I never should have needed to make peace with your true self, or fail to do so with your Heartless and Xemnas."
Sora experienced a weak urge to retch at the memory of how Xemnas had refused all, or almost all, comfort as he'd died for the last time.
And about how, while Xehanort's Heartless had made a number of true efforts to connect with them and he had even attempted to comfort Riku, Mickey, and him with his last words; he'd still died after revealing he hadn't even had hope in the darkness and he'd been lying about having as much faith in it as his true self since they'd met, so he'd thus faded away with no hope in anything at all, or at best, no real hope.
Sora wasn't sure which of Kairi's other two younger brothers had died in the most pain, if either.
Had it been Xemnas, who had vanished empty and alone from all connections and exerting the heart he'd at last he admitted he had to push them all away, honestly contrite and guilty about how he'd betrayed the colleagues who had trusted in him to guide them; with Roxas and Xion and Lea merely minutes away from reaching him, and very potentially willing to give him the warmth and kindness he'd refused to extend to them for so long and reveal to him that taking his own friends for granted didn't mean they would repay him in kind?
Yet refusing to accept that learning the folly of forsaking connections could do anything more than hurt him, while even dismissing the warmth Sora and Riku and Mickey had endeavored to extend to him; in order to hold onto his belief in the power of the darkness he'd once seen as both imprisoning himself between it and light while simultaneously cast away from both, but he now saw it as the last liberation?
Or had it been Xehanort's Heartless, genuinely glad to no longer have any reason to deny the warmth and joys and vitality and effervescence of light and finally feeling free to encourage them to continue to unlock the mysteries of space and time and the World and reality; and perhaps even seeking to protect them from Yozora and the Foretellers?
But in doing so, telling them both his faith in the darkness he'd fought for with perhaps even more dedication than the genuine Xehanort had been farcical beliefs he'd resigned himself to, because he didn't refuse to admit Heartless still had hearts, so he couldn't deal with being left behind by the majority of both of Xehanort's Organization Thirteens?
Who was Sora kidding?
Now exhaustion caused his toes and feet and ankles and legs and all of the rest of him to ache.
Sending Xehanort's Heartless back into the past had allowed him to truly die at the side of Riku and Vanitas; seekers of darkness who did have genuine faith in the abyss, and not its jaws and snares but its own forms of refuge.
And he had no guarantee that Roxas, Xion, and Lea would have been any more willing to forgive Xemnas than they had Xehanort; who he'd been able to tell very clearly confronting might lure to give back into the darkness.
Perhaps he'd done all that he could for both of them, and it was best that they'd died as they had.
If he'd done more, he might have just broken them far farther.
But Young Xehanort had laughed, genuinely laughed, and with even more fervor than the much more spirited Lauriam; when Sora had at last showed him that fate could be escaped.
Young Xehanort hadn't extended or rejected connections, but he'd still regained his own heart.
And Terra-Xehanort was still alive as a heart fragment; and while Sora saw no evidence Terra or Aqua or Ven or Sora himself had reached Terra-Xehanort at all before he'd struck them with the power of waking; Terra-Xehanort had never denied bonds in any way, and had just reversed them.
Sora was not going to let them fade away, broken and forsaken, as their other siblings had.
For Kairi.
For Xehanort's trust in him to take care of her as he'd refused to.
For Young Xehanort.
And for Terra-Xehanort.
"But we're no longer taking separate journeys in pursuit of the same shining, or absorbing, promise.
"Even though you refuse to spend much time with Kairi, can you at least please work together with us enough to deploy me on missions to test my abilities by battling with them?
"And then I'll Return To Mansion as soon as they're over, for you to study me as you choose."
"If I don't protect her from the Foretellers' trap, and she doesn't escape it herself; she won't get a New World of darkness or be content and safe in this one."
Terra-Xehanort detonated out of Young Xehanort's back to cross his arms with imperious arrogance and scowl with furious disgusted and revolted derision down at Sora.
"We're the ones in the position to dictate the terms of the contract here, boy!" the part Heartless, part heart fragment familiar cried in focused rage, his voice unchanged since the last time they'd met in the Keyblade Graveyard.
"Terra apparently did have power over me, but no one else does!"
Young Xehanort's lip curled in a little trace of mortified disgust, apparently embarrassed by how his younger brother was verbally stomping his feet.
Sora suppressed the urge to wince.
He couldn't tell whether Terra-Xehanort's refusal to live as more than a childish shard of a total tapestry of feeling had changed at all since the last time he'd heard a word from the heart fragment.
Then Young Xehanort rolled his eyes at Sora with derision of his own.
"Why won't you accept that; whether light goes out or not, and it has more shades than I was at first aware of, believing in the light just deludes people into seeing the world as a big joke?" Young Xehanort queried, his tone hard with challenge but still quietly steady.
"The light is nothing more than a candle that draws flighty moths to its warmth and then burns them alive. It enables people to blind themselves to the darkness all around us, and close their eyes to people in torment and the hardships of reality.
"I was once no different from you; and I, too, set out to see the World.
"But the sole light I found was blindness to pain and struggle, and a kaleidoscope of hallucinations to justify inflicting harm upon people's fellows. Light does nothing more than convince people death and ruin is moral and it should be indulged without restraint, rather than show them adversity is a necessity to ensure destiny can be contained enough to allow the World, and themselves, to grow.
"I believed the people I knew, at least, were capable of breaking this cycle.
"But every single one of them gave into the darkness, in pursuit of the same insubstantial gossamer.
"Yen Sid abandoned the populace of the World to flee into a refuge meant for no one but those close to him, out of fear altering the status quo would set off another interstellar war; thus letting untold more break out.
"Eraqus all but literally stabbed me in the back because he felt the risk I would murder or hurt someone was too great, when I saw no reason to do so until he taught me along with the other people I kept close nothing but pain can change this World.
"Nor did Luxu tell you precisely why Lunawreah was mugged."
Tears obscured Sora's eyes, and this time he wasn't aware of how much they ached due to how many times he'd cried in the recent days.
He at last knew Kairi's mother's name.
And, fitting Kairi's own name, that it was a combination of 'lunar seas' and 'weather.'
But that struggled to mean anything at the revelation Kairi's mom had also abandoned her and betrayed her as her dad had; and in ways similar to how Eraqus and Yen Sid had abandoned and betrayed their own children.
"Before the time she was mugged, a large number of merchant guilds merged to become Celestar Enterprises. They offered a variety of products and services to the inhabitants near the borders of the province of Radiant Garden they were based in, but the majority of these were confidence schemes enabling them to accomplish what amounted to slave raids, protection rackets, drug running, extortions, and other crimes.
"However, unlike many gangster corporations who merely sought to line their pockets through the profits of others, these gangsters resorted to crimes as a source of income because their district of Radiant Garden had suffered a series of debilitating famines and draughts, and they needed new sources of income and labor or many of the inhabitants would fall into poverty and perhaps die.
"I first met Lunawreah when Ansem dispatched her as the royal ambassador when he became aware of the truth behind the confidence schemes of Celestar Enterprises; to attempt to mediate the burgeoning disputes and erupting violence between the district and the surrounding provinces, as well as seek to convince the gangsters to end their criminal activities in return for economic assistance and other humanitarian support."
Kairi's mom had been a diplomatic ambassador.
Sora's determination to achieve with the two remaining Xehanorts what he'd done with the true one became more set.
"Lunawreah was successful, and at first, the majority of parties involved appeared satisfied with the negotiations.
"However, as time passed and the participants began to pick themselves up and put their lives back together, and move on, the critics of the negotiations; at first assuming what they saw as the flaws in the compromise, or the legitimate flaws in the compromise, would sooner or later be addressed; and now discovering Ansem wished to see the matter over and done with, became more and more outspoken.
"Among the least meddlesome were detractors who refused to accept no settlement can entirely satisfy all of the parties involved; and the majority of them quieted down after enough newspapers published pieces, a sizeable amount satirical, addressing the issue that the settlement had been a compromise, not an unconditional surrender or a trial.
"Other, relatively less outspoken critics than the harshest detractors of the settlement; were the ones who became gradually more morally affronted that all but a minority of the most unscrupulous war profiteers hadn't been convicted to prison, or even put on trial, because of how many people had lost their lives or been harmed due to their crimes. That they were attempting to provide for their families and loved ones and friends, and they now no longer intended to harm anyone, meant nothing to their detractors; they'd done something wrong, and thus, in order for justice to be upheld, they deserved to be given life sentences in jail, if not executed.
"Ansem refused these requests to put any of the profiteers on trial and issued a royal edict declaring any lower ranking politician who attempted to do so was to be the one arrested, and that convinced most of those critics to hold their counsel.
"Other critics were dissatisfied with the particulars of the contracts, or the compensation, because their grievances hadn't been sufficiently addressed. Lunawreah needed to return the negotiations to the conference table a small number of times to make minor but meaningful adjustments in order to satisfy those detractors.
"But among the worst detractors, many of them people who had lost family members or other loved ones or friends during the war, were the detractors who believed that, while seeing themselves as the brightest and most pure lights in Radiant Garden to claim this; because a sizeable minority within the province had participated in the gangsters' confidence schemes, the heart of every single inhabitant of the province was filled with nothing but the deepest darkness. Thusly, for the sake of all of the people of Radiant Garden, they increasingly maintained that every last person there needed to be murdered in the name of peace and justice, so as to ensure no one there attempted to commit further crimes, or perhaps even cause a war to break out."
"Fighting to love and keep safe brings about just as much death and pain as fighting for any other reason. This is why Mickey and the Disney Kingdom believe in the world order. They could easily solve a lot of problems on other worlds if they sent knights or other military forces there. But if they did, they'd just end up waging war or bringing about harm for the sake of connections, and peace and prosperity. This would result in as many horrific tragedies, and as much torture, as waging war for any other reason.
"The people who we murder and hurt while fighting to cherish and protect our loved ones, friends, other people, the worlds, and the World can no longer be protected and kept safe, and they have no present or future."
The numbness was entirely back, and reality and history separated behind another chasm, past which resided nothing but hot shifting tears.
This time it didn't reconnect.
Was that Sora's voice breathing in a horrified, fragmented whisper.
"No one at all would give into the darkness that far."
But he wasn't sure the words were his own, because there couldn't be anything such as connection or communication.
"That's not wrecking someone's heart, or world, or realm, or even large scale virtual death or true death where a lot of people still survive and pick up the pieces.
"That's the entire and absolute erasure of every single person living in a large, warm home through literal true and irreversible death.
"There's no way anyone at all would do that, even for revenge, or to care for one or more people and keep them safe."
Somewhere below the foundations of the endless abyss within which there was no light of any Kingdom Hearts, true or artificial, he could hear Young Xehanort scoff wordlessly.
"When will you learn?"
Somewhere past even the event horizon of his perception, Sora registered the weakest undercurrents of Young Xehanort's inflections were the barest amount similar to a brother competing with a friend or love for his sister's attention.
Reality manifested once more.
"Why do you think so many disputes erupt in violence, and don't return to peaceful arguments until the participants in the violence have spent themselves so greatly they have no way to deny the bloodshed can't back up their points?
"The other side of the argument is entirely dark, and the side the attacker agrees with is entirely light. Kindness and pain are black and white, us or them. There is no compromise or reconciliation to be found, because the other side is nothing but unblemished darkness and needs to be removed from all comprehension.
"This is one of the primary reasons I seek a New World where light and darkness are in balance.
"When people refuse to allow for the presence of darkness, and seek to bring it all to an end, or refuse to admit it's within them; they become convinced they're acting out of nothing but pureness of heart, and they see any form of death and pain as not unavoidable necessities, but effulgent salvation. They're knights in shining armor rending asunder all depravity; and there is nothing that restrains them from stabbing those close to them from behind at the click of a pin; when all they do is wish to go about their own business in peace, or return to their homes after weeks of turmoil begging for sanctuary from despair from the parents they trusted."
Sora forgot to suppress the urge to cringe at the reminder of what Eraqus had attempted to do to Ven; with full knowledge of how broken and hopeless Ven had been, and how much he'd already felt abandoned and betrayed by the two other people he had believed most loved him; because of sins Ven hadn't even committed yet, and had no intention of committing.
In uncounted ways, that had been even more remorselessly uncaring than even what Xemnas had done to Roxas and Xion; and akin to what Yozora and Luxu now sought to do to all of them.
And it was the same thing.
"Fighting to love and keep safe brings about just as much death and pain as fighting for any other reason. This is why Mickey and the Disney Kingdom believe in the world order. They could easily solve a lot of problems on other worlds if they sent knights or other military forces there. But if they did, they'd just end up waging war or bringing about harm for the sake of connections, and peace and prosperity. This would result in as many horrific tragedies, and as much torture, as waging war for any other reason.
"The people who we murder and hurt while fighting to cherish and protect our loved ones, friends, other people, the worlds, and the World can no longer be protected and kept safe, and they have no present or future."
Yozora and the Foretellers had fallen so much deeper into darkness because they fought much more to protect as well as avenge, while Xehanort fought a lot more to avenge than protect.
"In the end, no matter how bright the light is, the onyx black night will always devour all colors."
"Are you willing to accept my testament now, or do you need another demonstration?"
But what, genuinely, was there left to demonstrate after what Xehanort had just said a meaningful number of people in Radiant Garden believed in?
All Sora wanted now was to close his eyes, fall asleep now, and never wake up.
"But if people acknowledge the darkness surrounds them, they're aware that they are committing wrongs. Thusly, while they recognize the necessity of doing so, they're willing to show restraint when pragmatism doesn't require them to be ruthless.
"My real self all but stabbed Kairi in the back himself; but at least he kept her heart alive to serve my purposes in endeavoring to keep the true Kingdom Hearts open, and to ensure it is reopened for good if even the finished Kye-Blade was undone.
"And he was merely acting in accordance with the truth of the World.
"My true self sought to take a different path from the one you are, Kairi's contentment and succor, and fought you for the same thing, for a very clean and clear cut reason.
"Because if he had committed himself to safeguard her, rather than to vengeance for her near death and pain; he'd believe himself virtuous and noble, and sink as low as Yozora.
"I will not share your dream.
"I will not lie to the people I claim to care for; in the belief that it is the darkness, not the light, that can be eclipsed.
"Not as Yen Sid did, or as Eraqus did.
"Or as Lunawreah did, by refusing to tell me Ansem had dispatch her to spy on the police provinces that wished to start a genocidal war to fight for peace when her negotiations with them failed, in search of evidence they were stockpiling weapons so Ansem could dispatch knights to arrest them.
"In the hopes that, if this led to her death and Kairi's death, the people who knew the real reason she'd gone on her journey could deceive me with false letters she'd been dispatched far away on an emergency journey, and keep me in ignorant oblivion she and Kairi were dead until I died of old age."
Sora couldn't tell anything but absent emptiness; even if he'd contained the drawn sheer eruption of what was within his stomach, or if its taste inside his mouth was due to any of its presence within it.
"She returned from the journey safely and we spent a few more weeks together; but before she could either tell me she'd been in danger and might still be and needed a Keyblade Master to look out for her, or continue to keep her secret; she was mugged by criminals who had been paid to do so by the small number of detractors who had escaped the arrests; who knew of her pregnancy and that a mugging would very likely kill her and Kairi, but they believed that paying thugs to mug her would give them a more merciful sentence if the payment was identified and they were charged for the crime."
Sora's eyes were burning so much now the aching anguish kept new tears from pushing forward, but he forced a minority of last ones out now that he knew more of the story of how Kairi's mom had died.
The water in his eyes caused them to lance with stings, but he refused to blink them away faster than he usually did.
"I could care less that Eraqus ceased his hypocrisy in the end; and he apologized to my real self and Ven, and assured Aqua and Terra he now had faith in them both.
"His treachery, and Yen Sid's and Lunawreah's, already proved to me beyond any remaining doubt that all hearts can give into the darkness.
"Everyone has his, her, or its price.
"All he, she, or it needs is the correct incentive.
"Perhaps destiny can be averted, but I refuse to waste my time deluding myself darkness can any longer."
Something that caused Sora's insides to shift with terror so unrestrained it was even more thinly drawn than the diameter of a singularity was now tugging at the edges of Sora's awareness, but he couldn't place why.
"and Xigbar, who is actually a Keyblade Master named Luxu from the ancient age of fairy tales before the First Keyblade War."
Sora blinked.
How did Luxu's ability to survive the death of his first body by moving his heart into new bodies link together with Eraqus and how he'd done so, Yen Sid, and Lunawreah?
And why did it feel like he was refusing to acknowledge something that should be incredibly obvious to him by now, in the form of a kind of trap he was all too familiar with and their foes equally knew was a repeatedly tried and proven debilitating weakness of theirs?
This terror refused to leave, so he pushed it away.
But its presence, and how his heart felt as though it was a piston line hammering at the speed of light and about to laser out of his chest told him he needed to place this as soon as he possibly had the capability to; because if he was correct, he knew precisely not just what, but who; might very well, in innumerable ways, be the greatest danger to Kairi inside Scala ad Caelum.
Until he realized what was frightening him so much this time, though, all he could do was endeavor to continue the negotiations he'd begun in the false Scala ad Caelum.
"Just because anyone can give into the darkness doesn't mean anyone will," Sora replied, hoping he was succeeding in keeping most of the terror out of his voice.
If either Xehanort could tell what was off, they didn't say.
"You've said it, or implied it, enough times yourself.
"You want to teach people the darkness is there, and ensure it balances the light better.
"Why won't you accept that; as long as you keep spending your effort on researching the shadows; you're closing your eyes to the light as much as people like Eraqus, Yen Sid, Kairi's mom, and Yozora at first, are blinding themselves to the darkness?
"And what about what Woody and I attempted to teach you about hearts not letting go?
"Xehanort at last admitted hearts don't inevitably return to darkness when he saw; after everything Eraqus did, after each time he made the indifferent and rational choice as opposed to the loving and accepting one, even after how much death and torment those two choices caused, even after how indifferently he severed two strong connections at the snap of a finger; he still wouldn't let go of his connection to Xehanort?
"Xehanort discovered the same thing."
Genuine fury and hatred sliced through Young Xehanort's eyes now.
"Yet when Xehanort saw Eraqus mend his fences with his other three worst victims, that caused Xehanort to doubt Eraqus' sincerity, and fear Eraqus had abandoned him for his students as Riku and Isa feared the same things with you and Lea."
Sora kept any memories from even appearing in his mind's eye as more than insubstantial silhouettes at the knowledge of what dream he'd recall if he did.
"If you complete enough missions for me with flying colors, I will tell you precisely why I was the most devoted of all of us to a destiny of the abyss.
"You also most likely realized there's one remaining array of tenets Xehanort's Heartless himself kept from you, so I'll also tell you what they are.
"I haven't given up on teaching you darkness is still the heart's true nature."
Sora pushed down the rush of protective irritation at the threads of jealous anger at the bottom of Young Xehanort's voice causing him to sound as though he was now slightly arguing with a friend or love who believed that person knew what was better for his younger sister than her older brother did.
Kairi knew what was best for Kairi.
Not Young Xehanot, and indelibly not Sora.
By believing she didn't, Young Xehanort risked making it even harder for her to come to terms with her initial reaction to learning her heritage, and fate.
"For now, as an incentive for you and your curiosity, Aeleus has many more reasons for feeling guiltier than Dilan about his words and actions when he served my first Organization Thirteen, in addition to the ones you may or may not know about by now.
"It wasn't Luxu who was the most responsible for the treachery that convinced Xehanort's Heartless to submit himself to his fate, or I myself to do the same thing.
"Aeleus was responsible, and Luxu did nothing more than have as much a hand as the rest of the Xehanorts in playing him in the right directions to ensure he did it.
"And how Lexaeus taught both of us repulsed Xaldin so much; one of the critical reasons he was so determined to trick Beast into becoming a Heartless and Nobody was to show Lexaeus' legacy what he saw as an honorable way to maneuver a puppet."
Sora suppressed another rush telling him to cringe.
"Xehanort's Heartless merely lied to himself he'd submitted to the darkness, while refusing to acknowledge he held onto more faith in the light than any of us.
"Don't bother telling me that means, through a Heartless' presence as darkness itself, this is further proof shadows are cast by light.
"I did concede that much when my real version did.
"What I will not concede, nor will Terra-Xehanort; is that darkness is not the heart's true nature.
"You showed me yourself.
"Reality, and we ourselves, are how we choose to shape it.
"We don't become who we are fated to be, we become who we choose to be.
"But you refuse to confront that this demonstrates that it makes no difference whether hearts begin or end in darkness or light.
"It teaches us that fairy tales do nothing but lead to ruin regardless of whether we're born basking in light or die drowning in darkness.
"Because most people choose the darkness anyway.
"I did pay attention to Christopher's bawling dissertation on why black devours all colors; and I disagree with that as much as you; and not just because you enabled Eraqus and the real Xehanort, and light and darkness, to reconcile and reconnect, as friends rather than foes."
"In the end, no matter how bright the light is, the onyx black night will always devour all colors."
"Are you willing to accept my testament now, or do you need another demonstration?"
This time, it didn't leave by itself.
Sora needed to push it away, and determinedly.
What was it that was frightening him?
And why was it so familiar, and obvious?
"How can you continue to believe, if enough people trust in the light, they'll be able to teach the wretched multitudes who thrash in the darkness; when darkness is planted within hearts because hearts are weak even when they haven't given in?
"The seeds of the envy and greed that caused the First Keyblade War were sown because the Keyblade Wielders within the Unions founded by the Foretellers were afraid it was the light, not the darkness, that caused them to be weak.
"Certainly you must have at least learned by now that the light cannot solve all questions."
Reality was there, but on the other side of the abyss.
It was about him.
"As soon as the wielders in the Unions discovered their vaunted light didn't shield them against every single form of harm, they became aware of how weak they were and groped about for a greater light. As you have incessantly rambled, strong enough light should enable someone to surmount any difficulty; they felt the same.
"This led to darkness because hearts are cowards.
"Many more hearts than those of Yozora and the Foretellers answer adversity by searching for a way to escape it.
"Most people live that way.
"If they face hardship; be it in the past, present, or the future, or more than one place and period; rather than accept it and stand up to overcome it, they do nothing more than flee from it by dragging light out from under others to ensure they don't need to endure further hardship by seizing it themselves. Very few people work together to share their hurt and burdens as you and your companions do; they react to death and harm by siphoning the vitality to remain in the light from someone else. Then they deny to themselves they've become strong through darkness, and not light; close their eyes to the truth of the cosmos; live the rest of their lives stealing the light of others; and then they abandon their fellows to do the same thing because they prefer to inure themselves to adversity, when they could learn from their mistakes and do better in the future and teach the hearts around them not to repeat those mistakes.
"Hearts are nothing but moths that flit in forever repeating circles from planet to star, city to town; past to future, present to past; endlessly doing whatever they can to keep hurt and pain and death and murder away from them and letting it happen to anyone around them so they can fly about the light until they dart too close and it incinerates them.
"If light honestly were the heart's true nature, more people would be willing to stand up and face the darkness; and not just run from it while competing for how to fastest sprint to the inferno.
"That is your blissful simple and clean answer to all mysteries.
"I don't seek to avenge what the darkness did to Kairi and Lunawreah, or Yen Sid and Eraqus did to me, because I'm running away from the present and future into the past; as Yozora seeks to protect and avenge Faerie and others by running away from the past and present into the future.
"I'm doing so because I recognize that there is no other way to stand on my own legs and feet and walk through this World while still being true to myself and reality; other than to acknowledge that hearts, lives, feelings, dreams, true weakness, and genuine power come from the darkness, and not the light."
Sora refused to let any misgivings increase his fatigue this time.
Whether light brought about weakness as much as darkness; and not just strength while darkness that fed upon both weakness and strength; didn't mean his dreams weren't true unless they could be proven.
Though, for an unknown reason; the first connection Sora could trace that didn't tie that argument together was the Xehanort's continuing belief, not darkness, but power itself, was what solved problems.
But that didn't make sense.
Connections of love and dreams and friendship and care enabled him to feel strong; and if his feelings were strong enough, they gave him the effervescence and resilience to jump any hurdles.
How could his belief strength itself answered mysteries be misplaced?
But he'd think that over when he had time.
He could never think twice once again; if he wanted to keep anyone else from dying as Jiminy had, while he lay unconscious on the floor and let it happen.
Young Xehanort smirked in assured satisfaction.
"You have no Woody or Goofy to bail you out this time, I see.
"So how are you any less of a virtuous hypocrite who feeds off your loved ones and friends, and who draws true strength from the light?"
"Without them… I… All my strength came from them. They gave me all of it. Alone, I'm worthless. We've lost… It's over."
"Sora, you don't believe that. I know you don't."
Sora couldn't breathe once more, and this time, he didn't know what what should have been his heart could be.
Riku had just been right about how Sora didn't believe it was over.
"You're a whole pint by yourself, Sora."
Was that true?
What kind of whole pint couldn't do anything but abandon people, never and forever, over and without cease; since he'd first glimpsed the true depths of hurt and darkness in the Sleeping World That Never Was?
Was Young Xehanort correct, for once?
Was all he doing just hallucinating about the light, and fleeing the darkness by siphoning strength from Kairi and Riku and Roxas and Anna and Donald and Goofy and Jiminy, and the other people he loved and cared for and sought to keep safe and cherished?
Young Xehanort's smirk became a small but perceptible bit honestly empathetic and understanding and sympathetic.
"So you at last agree with a Xehanort," he spoke, and the same empathetic understanding and sympathetic awareness of how Sora was feeling was in his voice.
Sora was able to tell he wanted to retch soon enough this time to keep his stomach more settled.
"I'll give Maleficent this much regard," Young Xehanort continued.
"She refuses to pretend to be something she's not, and she's proud to dwell in the darkness.
"Sinners who openly admit to their darkness and draw confidence in them, are at least forthright about their determination to commit their sins; whether it's for mostly or purely selfish purposes such as why Maleficent and Pete walk in the darkness, or because they understand darkness is an unavoidable necessity as my true self and other selves once did, and Terra-Xehanort and I still do.
"What Maleficent doesn't understand is that dictating the destinies of others for no reason other than to feel greater than others won't give her the power to create a New World at all. She's still blinded by the light; the light of her own exaltation. So she thus refuses to be entirely true to herself and believes herself as much above the darkness as most denizens of the light, reducing her to as much of a tame hound lapping up darkness from the strong as any of them. I attempted to teach her this when I endeavor to create a particularly useful Heartless and Nobody from her with the Keyblade of Hearts. But her sincerity in wielding the darkness as the Mistress of All Evil prevented the process from becoming incomplete; causing them to hurled her Heartless and Nobody into two other worldlines before they were totally formed."
Sora started violently.
"What they are, I don't know; but this is another of Maleficent's roles.
"She is fated to recomplete with two selves that never divided; and by so doing, become the dreamed for Nightmare, thread together all of magic and imagination and fairy tale and memory into one tapestry of splendor; and offer it up through Cantata Lux, Goddess in Mirror, to the One Valkyrie."
This, itself, was now getting old.
To his surprise, Sora discovered he still needed to suppress an incredibly dim urge to roll his eyes.
As opposed to suppressing the urge, Sora embraced it.
He smiled partially sincerely and partially sarcastically, opened his mouth to close his teeth, brought one hand behind his head and shifted back into his preferred relaxed pose; and he rolled his eyes while tilting his head up at the ceiling.
"Been there, done that," he commented.
"I'll file that away with all the others.
"If the Foretellers want me to forge their Note Blade, they need to stop tiring my arms out with an increasingly heavy stack of notes.
"If they don't stop, I won't even be able to lift their hammer."
Terra-Xehanort twisted his head away at Sora's attempt to kid around with them; and he raised his chin in arrogant, petulant anger.
But Young Xehanort's face didn't shift at all.
"As I've learned of this tactic; the strategy is to scare you with your destinies so you'll cripple yourself with fears of avoiding them, or forced overconfidence they won't come about if you refuse to let them deter you."
Sora did let himself jolt violently then.
That meant there was an even greater chance the Foretellers hadn't seen through Goofy's strategy of not reacting one of those typical ways, through flight or defiance, but by pretending to partially resign themselves to it from the very start.
They'd just put that plan into action in Monstro; and if he could convince Young Xehanort to deploy him to Scala ad Caelum to play along without giving the Foretellers what they wanted by breaking a promise, it would have achieved its first success.
As usual, the darkness was clouding the eyes of the Xehanorts, and preventing them from seeing that the one thing Sora had increasingly agreed with them about from nearly the beginning was that the mysteries of the World needed to be unlocked in order to run and jump and dive and soar through the ocean of stars and clouds.
"Without them… I… All my strength came from them. They gave me all of it. Alone, I'm worthless. We've lost… It's over."
"Sora, you don't believe that. I know you don't."
But that actually gave Sora two foundations for a potentially enduring compromise.
And one of the minority of ways his second and third adventures had been successful was that it taught him, when his foes were willing to genuinely begin going on the offensive and showing their hand; that was when he most needed to trust the guidance of his heart.
He hadn't during his first journey through Monstro, when he'd threatened Riku when he should have attempted to continue talking him out of kidnapping Pinocchio; but when Lea and Isa had revealed what the first Organization Thirteen wanted with him, and Elrena had revealed Anna and Elsa were in as grave danger as the first Seven Hearts he'd met had been, he'd found a path forwards by trusting his connections, and the feelings they'd founded within him.
"My friends… are my power!"
Sora hadn't hesitated to say he believed that even before what he'd learned in Monstro; when Kairi, the past guardians, and he had finished off Xehanort's Keyblade Armor.
He'd just been worried about what would happen to Kairi and Riku and Donald and Goofy and Jiminy and Roxas and Anna and Elsa and the others when he vanished.
Right?
Then why hadn't he felt that uncertainty the two other times he'd sacrificed himself?
He must have felt it before temporarily giving up his memories in Castle Oblivion.
He just couldn't remember.
He hadn't been so crippled by misgivings he'd begun to lose faith in even love and care and home and connections even before he'd been trapped in Lacuna for over a year.
Could this much, at least, please, be true?
And, outside of his promise to Young Xehanort and these negotiations, and how his knowledge of what he was might better enable him to assist Kairi and Riku and Roxas and Anna at Scala ad Caelum; the choice Kairi and Anna and the rest of the New Seven Hearts now faced, and his identity as the Kye-Blade, meant nothing at this time.
Sora shook his head once more.
But this time, he needed to push the recollections and sentiments and thoughts aside.
Monstro was where he'd first really assisted a Xehanort.
He'd begin setting this right from where it had begun.
Sora reassumed a regular stance, but he brought Childhood's Laughter to his side and totally relaxed his guard externally while remaining at the ready to reassume it at an instant's notice.
Terror for Rapunzel, still patiently quiet and just warily observing his attempt at mediation; surged with such potency it almost pushed more of his food into his mouth.
But Sora pushed all of it, his feelings and food, back down.
"I don't agree, but I'm willing to think this point of yours over as a place to continue establishing our own compromise," Sora said.
Terra-Xehanort snarled in partially unbridled frustration and retracted back inside Young Xehanort.
Young Xehanort's expression lost what sentiment it had.
Sora suppressed the urge to cringe.
"That treaty was with my real self, not with me," Young Xehanort reminded him.
"You have nothing else to offer me in exchange for a say in how I test your combat capabilities.
"I could care less about such concepts as common enemies, keeping your enemies closer than your allies, how the enemies of my enemies are my friends, and an alliance of mutual advantage.
"That's not how destiny's tides surge, and I refuse to tell you the reasons I'm not going to make the mistake of assuming fate can be reshaped outside of what you've already shown me without further proof; nor will I make the mistake of giving you a chance to prove anything else to me.
"Darkness is present in every heart, and the hearts that refuse to give into it are few and far between. As a result, any attempt to live in the World, or to let the World itself live, that dismisses the darkness; is nothing more than the most undoing of all follies.
"That's all that I need to know.
"If you continue these negotiations, I'll require you to choose whether or not to break your promise without further delay.
"Then I'll stand by and watch as you finish giving into the darkness yet once more, one way or another, while still refusing to admit the hold it has never had on you.
"If you choose to break your promise, I may even let you leave; and at least travel a decent distance, before I travel through a corridor of darkness and inform you how you won't get anywhere without going through me first."
Whatever Sora had in place of a heart, if anything at all, he couldn't believe his lungs would work once more.
But he was able to keep them breathing after brief stillness.
Because hope surged with the knowledge he had a good chance of at least successfully mediating one compromise now.
He pushed the string of terror thinner than a singularity, and all of his other horror, now so strangling it wanted to asphyxiate his ribs and neck and throat and his lungs, away as far as it could go.
"I haven't once said that the darkness never had a hold on me," he responded, drawing on as many memories of Kairi's and Riku's and Donald's and Goofy's and Anna's jokes and races and kisses and smiles and hugs and effervescence as he could grasp and hold close and near.
"I've committed my share of sins.
"I threatened to fight Riku in Monstro when he hadn't given into the darkness that much, and thus pushed him deeper into it where your Heartless waited."
Sora pushed away the surge of anguish at the revelation of the wrong he hadn't had as much time to struggle to come to grips with.
"I shouldn't have let Namine alter my memories in the first place, but I must have felt so lonely without Riku and Kairi she preyed upon that.
"I refused to believe someone who wasn't human could feel, so I abandoned Roxas and Xion and Lea for months.
"If I hadn't given up in the Keyblade Graveyard when Kairi created her second largest Demon Tide, I might have been able to beat it with the extra Keyblades before it defeated Riku, and then I would have lived through using the power of waking to resurrect Kairi.
"Lastly, recall what I told Xemnas.
"I don't reject the darkness; I accept it, and choose the light.
"If you don't at least compromise with me enough to field test whether letting me choose my own missions at least once, and then decide whether to continue letting me pick them afterwards; you're not being true to yourself.
"Because you're now refusing to have faith in the very thing you're fighting for.
"You have your first true chance to harness the darkness to utilize the light without anyone currently in your way to stop you or delay you from doing it, but you won't trust your ability to stand strong on your legs and feet and do so enough to accept the presence of the light.
"In your submission to destiny; you're also giving up a chance none of the other Xehanorts but Terra-Xehanort would overlook, because they believed in controlling fate and not leaving it to chance, while you just go along with it.
"You're running away yourself.
"You've been stalled or beaten so many times, and you're so convinced the light is worthless as the hypocrites you hate are convinced the darkness is worthless; that you're now concentrating so much on snuffing out the light with the darkness you're refusing to use the chance you have in front of you to deliver the Foretellers and Maleficent and Mare a debilitating, perhaps even an irrecoverable, blow; thus increasing your chances of creating your New World and protecting Kairi.
"If you won't work together with me at all, not even to give me a chance to see if it works, you're betraying what you're fighting for as much as people like Yen Sid, Eraqus, and Yozora have."
Young Xehanort stiffened violently.
But no more than a few seconds passed before he snarled with barely contained, savagely vicious hatred.
"You have until Midnight, after the first time the Sun sets over Scala ad Caelum, to ride your glass Christmas Town carriage as a knight in shining armor," Young Xehanort all but bit out and snarled.
"If you haven't Returned To Mansion by then, I'll consider your oath broken."
Sora's legs no longer existed, but Rapunzel caught him around the shoulders before he could collapse to his knees, or face and stomach.
He'd done it.
He'd successfully negotiated another truce with a Xehanort.
He was that much closer to giving Kairi her two surviving brothers back.
And had worked.
Goofy's plan had actually worked.
And he didn't need to choose whether or not to break his promise.
Nor would he.
A large number of hours should be plenty of time to protect Kairi, Riku, Roxas, and Anna.
His legs appeared and vanished out of existence, morphing back and forth through aches after aches and rubbers; he was aware he was shaking and trembling and shuddering so violently he could have been jelly; and he couldn't even feel the burning in his eyes around a small amount of hot, relieved surpassing utterance and transcending encompassment blinding liquid tears.
Yet he could still see Young Xehanort hold out a hand, and another dark corridor appeared to Rapunzel's side.
"I won't argue with you about Rapunzel; because I know what your answer will be, and you're correct that I shouldn't delay you in confronting the Foretellers; so she's free to leave this time, through the front door.
"In order to ensure you trust this, if you return and don't find total factual proof I let her leave, you're released from your promise to me."
Rapunzel inclined her head with official politeness.
Further relief filled Sora.
"You have our thanks," she said.
"If you return here without my permission, or coercion, though; you will not be leaving that time, whether I have a use for you or not."
Rapunzel's face became a mask.
Sora shifted his legs to see if he could stand on them.
His weight held, although at least his perception was working well enough to tell that, while he was still mostly numb inside; his legs were barely even numb inside and outside now, and mostly not present.
Rapunzel let him go and turned to her right towards the door.
Sora suppressed the urge to tell her about Gothel, in the event she didn't know; but there was no time.
Rapunzel looked back at him uncertainly for a few seconds, but then she turned and raced to the door, opened it, and he heard her footsteps pounding down the hall outside after it closed.
"Here are my requirements," Young Xehanort continued.
"First, you are forbidden a coat to travel through the corridor of darkness with, or to return with."
Sora shifted to steel himself for what the darkness within might feel like.
"Secondly, all six Foretellers, including Yozora and Luxu, command a new Union of two; perhaps because they believe three is company as much as you and your companions, perhaps specifically to counter your preference to travel in groups of three, perhaps for both those reasons or one or more others or combinations; bringing their total human forces to seventeen, excluding Yozora if he is recompleted."
Why was the thread of terror and horror within him now so thin it felt as though it was going to crumple all of his self around it?
One of the first things Sora needed to discover was who, and what, he was so terrified awaited Kairi.
"Roxas and Anna know who one of them are, but you are to determine the identities of the other eleven Union members, and as much as you can about the new purposes assigned to each Union and the duties of each member in carrying them out.
"I also require you to put all of your skills you've learned with an artificial Keyblade to the test, one way or another; by bringing about, all by yourself, the confirmed deaths of at least:
"Thirty Darklings of average skill, talent, and power; fifteen ordinary Demon Tides or Dreamreapers of similar offensive and defensive capability; eight Nightmare Chirithies belonging to their least adept caste; and four wyrm Darkling cyborgs."
Sora needed to reposition his legs to keep them from giving out.
How was he supposed to accomplish that; particularly if the least perilous Nightmare Chirithies and the wyrm Darkling cyborgs; assuming he could even identify any of them, or any Darkling, were that much more deadly than the Demon Tide equivalent of Shadows?
Even with his abilities once more crippled, he was pretty sure he could defeat a few by himself, but it wouldn't take more than a minority of battles with Dream Eaters and other dark denizens for confrontations like that to begin taking their toll.
But he, Kairi, Riku, Donald, and Goofy had just joked about how they'd need to take on Gummi Heartless if they wanted a decent challenge now; and he'd meant it.
He could find a way to do this.
"Lastly, you are free to choose which kind of Dreamreaper to target, but I want at least one medium caste or top of the chain Dreamreaper dead; only at the hand of injuries or indirect methods you can reasonably confirm originated from the Kye-Blade, and not a Keyblade."
Sora was surprised he was able to remain standing this time.
But he could do this.
He had no choice to, or die making the effort.
He'd promised.
"If any Princesses of Heart present in Scala ad Caelum during this assignment create a Dreamreaper more potent than one at the top of the natural chain; you are to select your target from that option or options in the chance it possesses talents unique from other comparable natural Dreamreapers, as long as it is at least as perilous as a medium caste natural Dreamreaper."
His resolve and determination refined itself.
No Princess of Heart, Kairi or Anna or Elsa or anyone else, was creating any more Dreamreapers.
"Move out, effective immediately."
Sora didn't wait to see if his legs had steadied themselves.
He turned and barreled for the corridor of darkness.
Within seconds, coiling blackness shut upon all of his surroundings.
.
"You're doing things you don't want to do, just to escape your own feelings of guilt. 'Hypocrite'… the word doesn't even begin to describe you. Be more true to yourself!"-Lieutenant Luis Virgil/Blue Testament
"What makes you think you understand me?!"-Shion Uzuki
"Oh, I understand you. Because you and I are the same kind of person. What is it that drives you?"-Lieutenant Luis Virgil/Blue Testament
"Ha!"-Shion Uzuki
"That's right. Revenge. Only revenge drives you and me and that's the truth. Ideals crumble easily. Hope is like a mist before the morning Sunrise of reality. That's exactly how I was. But then I learned. Nothing will change. There is a limit to will, the limit of this world in which everything is closed. Yes, that is what all of us came to understand."-Lieutenant Luis Virgil/Blue Testament
"Stop! I don't want to hear anymore! Virgil, you protected me as a child and now… Why do you do these things to tear at my heart? Why do you Testaments appear before me?! Why won't you leave me alone?!"-Shion Uzuki
XENOSAGA: Episode 3:
ALSO SPRACH ZARATHUSTRA