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CHAPTER 50:
KEEPER TERMINUS
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Author's Notes: The compositions for this Chapter are, in order of scene: 'Dragon God,' from the CHRONO CROSS Original Soundtrack, Disc Three; and afterwards 'Battle on the Bridge,' from the FINAL FANTASY TACTICS Original Soundtrack, Disc Two; and afterwards 'Star Tower,' from the CHRONO CROSS Original Soundtrack, Disc Three; and afterwards 'Grahf, Emperor of Darkness,' from the XENOGEARS Original Soundtrack, Disc One; and after this 'Proto Merkabah,' from the XENOSAGA Episode One Original Soundtrack, Disc One. The first three compositions can be found on Zophar's Domain, and the latter two in KINGDOM HEARTS Insider's MP3 section.
Sora had no chance at all to take in what Christopher had just said when a pillar of ice rose up behind the staircase reaching the front side of the Altar of Naught and Roxas, his features a preserved fixture of for eternally anywhere beyond unseeing denying horror and hate that didn't even appear to be witnessing something no one but he could behold with desperate tears cascading down above a mouth that opened contorted in soundless wideness, and a titanic opalescent column with the crest of the Nobodies at its apex erupted upwards and outwards from him to sweep towards Christopher like a tsunami.
Sora knew what Christopher would do, but he didn't care.
The next second, Sora vaulted over the broken little boy
Fractured Night was in his hand and in a guard position but he stood looking at the onslaught of likely death he was by any sensible definition more than rationally all but helpless against with no more than a slightly more amused smirk than his usual ridicule
to land sideways between the rushing lethality and the child with the Kye-Blade in a guard position against Roxas' conflagration and Childhood's Laughter ready to intercept whatever strike Christopher would launch at an unknown target while Sora was occupied protecting him.
Before Roxas could vanish into the pearl, though, he jerked violently as though struck from behind.
Within the space of a small number of seconds, familiar white frost had spread over his skin and clothes and Oathkeeper and Oblivion and his hair from behind, and he was a statue of white and light blue.
For the first time, unsuppressed undiluted hatred rippled over Christopher's face as he looked up at the source of the curse.
Then it was gone, and his features were once more immovable.
Anna's lips were pressed together with tight determination.
Elsa's right hand was extended, an incredibly guilty, but determined, expression on her face.
Vanitas was looking on, a blanket of night spread behind him and above him and to his sides like partially unfurled wings, his sentiments beneath the surface.
"I accelerated it on the surface, and for a good amount of layers between his skin, and his lungs and heart," Elsa spoke, her voice calm with a similar guilt and determination.
"But I altered the temperature so the cold is too numbing for it to be painful, and he still has more than enough time for Xion or Axel, or someone else, to break it before it may have passed the point of no return.
"I also heated the sections where he severed his arteries enough to cauterize the breaks, and greatly slow, or stop, blood loss or his chances of suffocating in his own blood.
"If he's given sufficient medical care within the next minority of hours, he should live through this."
The tears were drowning out everything.
"The New World that he believes in is made up of nothing but the same empty halls and rooms and castle and corridors that I've lived in for most of my life because Mom and Dad didn't want the rest of Arendelle to know about Elsa's magic."
Sora wasn't sure whether or not he'd fully lost awareness of all of his existence and reality for a number of seconds, or whether he was now imagining everything within a delirious hallucination of feverish insanity.
No.
He must have been imagining his self, his connections, existence, and reality, and all selves, connections, existences, and reality within a delirious hallucination of feverish insanity from the instant of his inception, and he had no hope at all of escaping it.
There was no way that he could have just heard that.
Blindingly incandescent loving and radiantly brilliant warm Anna had not spent most of her life in a frozen prison of loneliness.
All Sora wanted to do was to jump up onto the ice pillar, sprint up to Anna, and hold her as close and warm and secure and tight from all never not anywhere nightmares while he cried until he had carved even the despair and absence at the essential foundations of the neverlasting anypresent switchback labyrinth inverting the self of what was a concave out of all of noinsidewhatwas him.
"Nooo!"
And for Anna to hold him as securely warm and away from it all as possible.
It gave away.
He couldn't even catch the tears of, and carry the hurt and pain of, the most blindingly incandescent love and warmth he'd drowned and basked in in his life now.
Or have his own pain and hurt carried, or his own tears caught, by her.
He couldn't even love and care for and cherish and keep safe Anna now.
Or she him.
Because as broken as he was now, Sora could no longer guarantee it was just the love of friendship he'd give, or receive, if he did.
He'd even abandoned, and betrayed, Anna now.
And even she couldn't save him now.
While Kairi, the person who he most wanted to keep to the hearth in a close, refreshing embrace, and be kept the closest to in a warm hold, was the one person he belonged as far away from as possible for all history if he was to have any chance remaining at all of catching her tears and giving her that sanctuary without siphoning off her love and kindness, dragging her down, holding her back, and hurting her, as he had every last solitary instant since he'd met her.
Riku, Donald, Goofy, and Roxas, four of the other six hearths he wanted to keep home, and stay home with, almost as much, were no different.
And Jiminy
The first thing Sora knew, as Woody's voice receded, was what he didn't know.
Wetness couldn't do anything more than push against the backs of his eyes.
"My friends are my power!"
"We've lost… It's over."
"Sora, you don't believe that. I know you don't."
But this time, Sora couldn't even tell what he did, or didn't, believe, or, point immeasurably past that, know.
It was no longer a matter of light possessing innumerable shades vision couldn't see, but the heart could hear, while darkness was a single opacity that obfuscated the eyes.
It was no longer the edge between fact and fiction.
It was no longer the margin between shared understanding and potent prophecy.
It was no longer the separation between self and savior.
It was no longer the chasm between blade and intent.
It was no longer the precipice dividing remorseless reality and effervescent trust.
There was anything more, or nothing less, than his stranded castaway severance.
"That's the heart's true nature – to never, ever let go."
"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!"
However, even this didn't matter.
He was still a whole pint by himself, alone or with loved ones and friends as his power.
And even though even love and friendship might not be able to defeat the darkness submerging Kingdom Hearts itself, and no one could remain connected to Kairi and the other Princesses, or Elsa to Anna, if everyone forgot them, together or apart, Sora didn't need to be sure he could believe in connections any more than he needed to be sure he could believe in anything else.
No matter the world, no matter the World, no matter the self, no matter the heart, all he needed to do to keep his hope in love and connections and safeguarding a hearth and catching people's tears to bring them to a warmly lit sanctuary was to dream his oaths could come true.
And this time, he even had his factual power of connections found among fiction.
Vanitas was right here, with his ability to open a corridor of darkness himself, and call plenty of dark entities through it.
And Sora had felt within Roxas that Xemnas had allowed his teammates to assist him in fulfilling his Mission objectives; so, as Young Xehanort hadn't said Sora couldn't do that, all four of them could fill up Sora's quotas.
That was if they hadn't already filled up all of them but the one requiring Sora to specifically utilize the Kye-Blade.
Then Vanitas could open a corridor of darkness back to the Old Mansion, and Sora would have kept his promise.
Sora's stomach wanted to eject itself out of his abdomen at the concept of discounting Roxas' condition, and Xion's destiny, but there would be time to give feeling and thought to that after Sora had kept his vow.
Keeping as wary of Christopher as Sora could spare the attention, Sora positioned both his natural and artificial Keyblade in a neutral guard position he could shift to intercept Christopher as the situation required and looked at Vanitas, paying no attention other than a peripheral analysis for potential dangers at the amalgamation of Symphony of Sorcery and Scala ad Caelum he could see over the edge of the dais.
"Where are Kairi and Riku, and anyone else here?" Sora asked with rapid speech.
"And what adversaries can you confirm you yourself, or anyone else in my de facto squad, beat before meeting up with me, or you've learned the identities of?
"Young Xehanort let me pick my Mission, but we're in the realm of darkness, and I need to make it back to the Old Mansion by Midnight in accordance with Scala ad Caelum's day and night cycle, or I'll have broken my promise."
Anna's eyes went slightly wide.
The determined set to her visage burgeoned even more, though.
The echo of an inside out, serrated anguish ripped through him.
Thin constricting faraway distantly known terror throbbed through it afterwards.
What was he missing?
But there was no time for that.
Elsa's own mouth thinned into a determined cast.
"Your friendly neighborhood Heartless throngs, along with smaller swarms of Demon Tide Dreamreaper goons and relatively unremarkable or bigwig swarms of hearts that altered themselves with darkness without giving up their forms"
White jet horror sheeted through Sora
He swept it, too, aside
"known as Darklings," Vanitas replied.
"I picked it up when you turned my original self's Nobody into a pincushion with his own needles, and he's a hive heart and mind in two bodies because he's a Dreamreaper, so you thrashed one Very Important Person qualifier Dreamreaper yourself."
Then that but left the Nightmare Chirithies, and identifying the Union leaders.
Sora simultaneously knew, and didn't know, he had legs, and he wasn't just lightness.
Sora pushed what it portended that Yozora hadn't just become a Nobody, and Heartless far off, additionally.
"We can defeat them!" Anna cried, with contained terror in her voice.
"I'm the one feeling your pain in my heart this time, and you need to get Kairi out of here in the time you have left, to prevent the same thing from happening to her I did with Elsa!"
At the word Elsa, and the awareness of what she was to Anna, it all dispersed cascading into nothingness as it refined.
All that Xion could in actuality register was Axel's warmth, and that of Mare and Tidus.
Yet, for whatever reason, what Tidus had told her kept all of the lightness from ebbing, and the new aches that were once more all over inside her and outside her were still there, as Xion let Axel go and took a single step backward to tell Mare and Tidus to stop touching her themselves.
They hadn't fully done so when she turned to see not just Ira standing before them, but Invi at his left.
A sapphire and soot portal to the Lanes Between opened above them and in front of them, and a woman around Riku's age with long and loose orange hair clad in all white clothes, clutching a light green Keyblade the color of a plant stalk ending in a Sunflower pattern in the same shape as Destiny's Embrace's prongs in her right hand, sprang down from it.
As she did, the components of what appeared to be a full scale toy version of the gold Gigases Sora could engage in combat in the Verum Rex at Galaxy Toys soared towards her from all directions, and assembled themselves around her.
The Keyblade coiled in light gold and yellow into the Gigas' own right hand.
Then six amethyst wings of pure energy erupted from its back in a shape similar to Kairi's twelve Valkyrie in Rainbow Bridge angelic wings, six on its left and six on its right.
Ephemer's eyebrows raised in surprised approval.
"So that's why you didn't meet us," he commented.
"You were putting the finishing touches on your Photogigas."
"I was determined not to wait until it was too late to make this introduction," a voice that could belong to no one but Strelitzia replied with a combination of contained guilty determination and self hateful longing.
"But yes, with Yggdrasil bolstering me, I've got this."
Ephemer's lips curled down in a slight frown.
Ira, however, just shifted into a ready stance, without calling Norn or his Keyblade.
Invi did the same thing.
"The Black Box will shortly appear on the balcony between the two spires of the clocktower."
Ephemer didn't react to this information visibly at all.
This meant that Xion had no way to tell if this was misdirection for the two Foretellers, or if Ephemer had honestly wanted to know this.
"Isa, Axel, I wish we could have met under better conditions for the first time, but you have no idea how grateful I am to both of you for keeping Brother and Elrena from diving into the darkness any deeper, misplaced as your reasons for doing it were."
Axel started violently.
Mare sagged.
Namine's mouth opened.
Isa gave the cockpit of the Photogigas an acknowledging smile that was clearly
Xion's weight decreased a scant bit more, but no more than slight surprise passed through her.
"No, I'm not jealous of you for the time Brother saw you as my replacement."
There was something forced in Strelitzia's voice now.
Ephemer frowned even more.
"I actually admire you a lot.
"If I'd been in your position, I'd most likely have remained in Brother's shadow even with how obvious it was he was doing the wrong thing, out of terror standing up to him would just make things worse, and I'd have just abandoned Sora and Riku to become Brother's and Xehanort's Heartless' pawns indefinitely.
"You stood up for yourself and stepped out of his shadow; and by doing so, you taught Riku and Vanitas there's nothing wrong with living as a shadow.
"That's far more than I've done at any time in my life."
Uncountable expressions passed over Namine's face.
"If you would just accept your role to equalize shadow and light, that would change," Invi put in, in a composed, calm voice.
"Like mustering the nerve to protect Empyreal changed things one bit?" Strelitzia retorted, a knifing chasm of despairing bitterness in her voice Xion knew all too well.
"It's too late… for me to undo my mistakes. But you can't let Xemnas… have Kingdom Hearts. You can't."
There was no longer any reason to push it away.
"Unlike Namine, Vanitas, and Riku, I'm content to not be my own shadow, thanks.
"But if you don't hurry, Riku is very likely going to end up not just as no shadow but Sora's, but now Kairi's, too."
Namine's face became a skeleton's.
Xion discovered she was falling.
Then Mare's hand was that of her Neo Darkside self, with human skin, and closed carefully but firmly around Xion's lower torso.
"I'm through with hearing about false lights!" she snarled with undiluted hate.
The rest of her body congealed into a blot of night resembling the one Xion dimly recalled the Ventus' Armored Nightmare altering into when Riku had confronted it.
"And I myself would also like to hear, direct from the source, what Aqua doesn't want to tell me!"
Xion didn't know whether to be surprised, or not, that Isa slid his grasp between two of Mare's giant fingers shortly after Axel and Ephemer did, but before Mare vaulted over Ira and Invi, and was then bounding up the nearest and steepest intersecting rainbow bridge.
The lance tip of thrusting every washing pain that ripped into Mickey's heart as he somersaulted off the rooftop edge towards the fountain where Ephemer and Ava, and Ephemer and Empyreal, had once laughed and cried together; before which Kairi and Gula and Empyreal now stood, while unaware of its significance, along with Gula and Skuld's Heartless and a hooded Union wielder, currently walking backwards from Kairi; took all of the beating from Mickey's heart.
Yet his legs were still able to land steadily.
Unlike Riku, who was lying unmoving on his back, clearly badly hurt.
All Riku did was close his eyes in a broken coagulation of grateful relief and desperate resignation.
There was something disjointed in how Kairi was standing, as though she were nothing but a hollow marionette with all her limbs snapped into grain, that Mickey liked even less.
Gula and the unidentified Union member didn't do anything more than turn to partially face him.
"Whatever's going on, I'm not letting anyone walk this road," Mickey proclaimed in the voice of Riku's friend, not an official edict, but one that he had even less intentions of refraining from overruling any arguments against.
Mickey's stomach warped at how Riku's face now did nothing more than shift.
Kairi didn't react at all.
The two Union wielders still didn't respond, audibly or visually.
Skuld's Heartless, though, snarled with uncontained viciousness directed at least as much at herself as at Gula, or the unidentified Union member.
"You and me both," she said.
"That's why I'm here.
"I'm sure Yen Sid knows by now just how deep Empyreal's darkness drops, but he at least fought until the last wisps of his dream had vanished into the day to keep the other Unions from being eradicated.
"Ephemer refused to believe all hope was gone, so much he even rebuked Ava for talking as though it was, and while he refused to be accepted as the head leader, he knew if he didn't forge the Dandelions into a cohesive battling force in the datascape, we'd be castaways without his guidance.
"He didn't want to abandon anyone any more than I did, but he did it because of what was riding on him.
"Me?
"I just carried out my orders like a good itty Dandelion; attempted to do what's best for everyone in ways that even Isa, at his worst, would have retched violently at hearing about; that put every concept of how people who don't learn from the mistakes of the past will repeat them to shame; stood aside as a bystander, and let it all happen."
Yozora's Heartless staggered, Empyreal clearly now attempting to retake his body, but he steadied his feet and remained where he was.
"I didn't lose as many people as Empyreal did, but I'm still confident I have comparable enough darkness to his to pull this off, and I made as sure of it as I can by becoming a Heartless.
"Leave Gula to me.
"You have no clue how long I've waited for this."
Before Mickey could say anything back, Skuld's Heartless aimed her two sais at Gula.
Then the air rushed behind her as a familiar in the shape of a raft sized World of Chaos; one that was primarily the color of a bleached, faded human skeleton with an obsidian Face, a Core the color of the water that had once trickled into this fountain, and a crimson shade with silver bands and orange hemispheres on its shoulders; washed out around her and back beyond her and before her.
Skuld, her body and garb unaltered, leapt up onto it smoothly.
Before Mickey could say anything, she aimed its prow at Gula and rocketed at him with her feet planted as though her Formchange resembling the World of Chaos was a surfboard.
Sora was barely aware he was staggering backwards, as though he were recoiling from touching molten lava.
Something rushed at him.
Another thing was in front of him, and then Sora realized Void Gear had met Fractured Night with a cacophony.
Existing reality was reeling upended and swimming, and then knowledge returned and Sora brought one leg behind him to catch himself in place.
"Your temper tantrum is really getting old," Vanitas snarled, with a type of unrestrained, vicious revulsion in his voice Sora had never heard before, even when he had been a member of the Real Organization Thirteen.
"You think you've had a tough time in your formative years?
"Try spending all of them living alone while learning nothing about reality but how to endure among the most rigorous training in harnessing darkness, and combat, it's possible to survive without becoming a permanent physical cripple."
Christopher leapt back, long and low.
"Spare me," he snorted.
"You didn't have a chance to know what happiness was like in the first place; so, unlike your real self, you have no means of grasping what it is to lose it."
A large amount of blood actually drained away from Vanitas' face.
"Or do you want me to involve Namine, Ven, Sora, and Riku in my next demonstration?"
The miasma around Vanitas rushed back into him, making it obvious Vanitas had contained his ability to form Unversed before it went haywire.
Sora, though, solely perceived this was happening as though it was happening on the opposite precipice of a dividing abyss with no bottom that truly was there, but he was at the same time less part of than anything else in his life.
"You forget I plan for every eventuality."
"Twelve keys we have now. Leaving just one more. Now, Sora. Darkness and light's final clash."
"I am the one who hid the fragments of Kairi that you seek. Of course I am here."
"Unfortunately, you're a little too late."
"You require motivation."
"I have done it."
"Now… the Keyblade War will finally reach its conclusion! The Kye-Blade is complete! Kingdom Hearts! I call upon your true form. Open now and show me the World to come."
"Just let it end, boy."
"You thought you could contain me here… knowing all that you do about connections? There is one sky, one destiny!"
"Thinking of you, wherever you are. We pray for our sorrows to end, and hope that our hearts will blend. Now I will step forward to realize this wish. And who knows: Starting a new journey may not be so hard or maybe it has already begun. There are many worlds, but they share the same sky – one sky, one destiny."
"Anna was struck in the heart by Elsa's ice magic. Only an act of true love can thaw a frozen heart."
"I have to bring her home."
"You require motivation."
"I have done it."
"Now… the Keyblade War will finally reach its conclusion! The Kye-Blade is complete! Kingdom Hearts! I call upon your true form. Open now and show me the World to come."
"You thought you could contain me here… knowing all that you do about connections? There is one sky, one destiny!"
"Anna was struck in the heart by Elsa's ice magic. Only an act of true love can thaw a frozen heart."
"Thinking of you, wherever you are. We pray for our sorrows to end, and hope that our hearts will blend. Now I will step forward to realize this wish. And who knows: Starting a new journey may not be so hard or maybe it has already begun. There are many worlds, but they share the same sky – one sky, one destiny."
"I have to bring her home."
"You thought you could contain me here… knowing all that you do about connections? There is one sky, one destiny!"
"Thinking of you, wherever you are. We pray for our sorrows to end, and hope that our hearts will blend. Now I will step forward to realize this wish. And who knows: Starting a new journey may not be so hard or maybe it has already begun. There are many worlds, but they share the same sky – one sky, one destiny."
"Thinking of you, wherever you are. We pray for our sorrows to end, and hope that our hearts will blend. Now I will step forward to realize this wish. And who knows: Starting a new journey may not be so hard or maybe it has already begun. There are many worlds, but they share the same sky – one sky, one destiny."
"I have to bring her home."
"Anna was struck in the heart by Elsa's ice magic. Only an act of true love can thaw a frozen heart."
"You require motivation."
"I have done it."
"Now… the Keyblade War will finally reach its conclusion! The Kye-Blade is complete! Kingdom Hearts! I call upon your true form. Open now and show me the World to come."
"You thought you could contain me here… knowing all that you do about connections? There is one sky, one destiny!"
Elsa was standing protectively in front of the frosty sculpture that had once been Roxas.
Anna was midway between Elsa, and Sora, her gunblade in guard location.
"I wouldn't hinder your ability to bring reinforcements onto the stage," Christopher said to Vanitas with mildly amused reproof.
"As Luxu used to live through the centuries by moving his heart from vessel to vessel, so his own heart is now asleep within mine; bequeathing me all his well over eleven millennia of talent, skill, experience, and might along with it."
Sora was aware his legs had given out at those words.
"Sora!"
"Sora, you don't believe that. I know you don't."
No!
I'm never giving up!
No matter what sky!
No matter how lasting, or deep, the darkness!
The warm light of love, and my friends, are my power!
There is always a light to guide us, as long as we never stop searching for it!
My friends are my power!
Come what may, forever and everlasting bonded together!
Christopher shrugged slightly.
Then he smiled amusedly.
"One hundred twenty… one hundred nineteen…"
The shock of water that drenched Sora was more biting than a vacuum too cold to even possess ice, and he knew he had less than two minutes left to bring Kairi home and warm, and keep Riku, Roxas, Anna, and all the rest of them safe, as well as fulfill his oath.
Vanitas scowled blackly, and an oblate blackness arose behind him.
Sora's tears swam, or perhaps it was reality, or perhaps reality and crying had no division at all.
Roxas.
Vanitas.
That was it.
Woody had understood.
All Sora needed to do was refuse to give up on dreaming, even if the last sanctuary he could trust in was dreams themselves, and he could imagine the answer.
As he and Riku had kept picking each other up when their legs had broken, and as Kairi had kept doing the same thing for both of them, Roxas had been within his heart, Vanitas had been within Sora's, and Ven was the closest thing to a heart of pure light someone who wasn't a Princess of Heart could have.
And Sora knew of a girl who was the light to the Unversed darkness within Nobodies, whose laughter and smiles could open more doors than there were hearts in the World.
Sora traced his connections to Roxas and Vanitas, and then to Kairi and Riku.
Ven wasn't anywhere nearby, so Sora called vibrant warm and pulsating beams from his connections to Kairi and Riku, and then remembered what it had felt like to experience the warmth of Ven's heart settled content and secure inside his own when he'd called to the power of waking with all his heart this time.
With Kairi's, and Riku's, light reinforcing Sora's own, Ven was there, as Riku had been when Sora had been in the Sleeping Scala ad Caelum.
Something was off about him in ways that Sora had never felt before, but he didn't have enough time left to worry about that now.
Vanitas rolled his eyes.
Then, though, he furrowed his brow, and Sora knew he was casting about for the locations of the eight Nightmare Chirithies he must now be able to perceive needed to be slain, and preparing Unversed to deploy against them, while also scrying on the Union wielders.
Kairi and Riku would feel bathed in more warmth if they were a part of this, so Sora directed the verdant potency of their own lights into the tapestry he'd woven, as well.
Sora let his heart, and self, drown in the brilliant incandescence of the love he shared with Kairi, Riku, Donald, Goofy, Roxas, Anna, and even Vanitas, and Jiminy.
Vanitas nodded once, curtly, to tell Sora his Mission objectives had been completed.
He suppressed the urge to grin his open mouthed, closed toothed grin in relaxed and easy confident triumph, not knowing if he had time.
With anything bound together, Sora unleashed a deluge of verdant, thrumming light cascading in tidal rapids through Childhood's Laughter and the tapestry he'd woven, funneled it through Ven's heart, and sent it directly into Boo's, distant far in differently irreplaceably cherished ways.
Sora then brought up a Door of Light right beneath where Kairi was standing.
He summoned up a second below Riku.
The third was called up beneath Roxas.
The fourth sprang up beneath Anna.
The last leapt from below Sora's own feet.
Sora extricated himself from the tapestry.
He was aware just at the threadbarest edges of his perception he couldn't drop his guard yet.
Not until he was certain the Doors of Light had closed on this side, and he was inside the Old Mansion.
With Kairi, Riku, Roxas, and Anna out of this nightmare on the Twilight Town clocktower balcony.
And, if Elsa and Vanitas were willing to accompany them, they'd joined them in one, or more, of the three Doors of Light.
Christopher threw his head back, and he howled with unrestrained, unmitigated glee.
Sora's breath hitched.
He knew Christopher must be desperate now, though.
So he refused to worry.
"Clasping your trust in love, friendship, bonds, home, dreams, the light, and oaths close, with reverberating hope, and without skepticism, does what, perchance?
"Well, it's okay.
"You don't need to have just questioned what had happened to Ven.
"After all, you don't know how Ven died at Xion's hands.
"And you can't know that by sending that much of his light into Boo's, you just killed her, while you forced Kairi and Riku against their intention to participate in the murder of the innocent, helpless little girl you just committed."
A not there object collided with Sora's forehead at an askew angle.
Sora had no grasp of why he was lying on something on his stomach, or whether he was beholding tears, or something beyond them.
He wouldn't even have been able to comprehend any of this, or what the tears that were reality conveyed, if the labyrinth of crystalline fractures hadn't now severed the last knowledge of the break between connection and emptiness into the particles of black glass sand grains.
All he would have known was that all of the Doors to Light were now gone.
However, they could never have been there to begin with.
Christopher's voice was lightly and amusedly chiding.
"One…
"Zero.
"Your time has run out.
"And your meaningless existence along with it."
Mare broke out of her leap in the middle of her motion meters roughly above her intended landing point at the place where the rainbow bridge leading from the core of the knot to the cloud loop started, returning all of herself but her Neo Darkside grip to its human form to land in the process.
Before anyone could ask why, including Xion, a wildly and tumultuously dancing column of distilled night erupted at the midpoint of the bridge connecting the two sides of the clocktower far in the distance, and above them.
Ira was so far behind them now his calm, but quietly relieved and accomplished, voice shouldn't have been that audible, but he must have been casting a spell to amplify it.
"It has begun.
"The fated time is upon us.
"The World of everlasting sorrow; where connections themselves are the cause and source of all hurt, all journeys lead nowhere, history is nothing more than an endless spiral of pointless torment, and all dreams wither into the silent emptiness without end, unheard and apathetically dismissed by everyone and everything; will be born again anew into an existence where hearts beat for a purpose.
"The advent of the Key of the last power is at hand."
.
"Ben. In case you hadn't noticed – you're fourteen!"-Mara Jade Skywalker
"Congratulations on another birthday. So whatever torture your teachers, including me, had in store for you today – forget it. Report to me for some birthday credits, and the rest of the day is yours to enjoy."-Luke Skywalker
"Hi, Mom. Hi, Dad. For my fourteenth birthday, I killed a little girl."-Ben Skywalker
STAR WARS:
LEGACY OF THE FORCE: Book Four:
EXILE