To Aqua's credit, she only threw up twice that day. The first spooked the Blessed Coach into a frenzy, and it took off even faster, only slowing to a safe pace once she washed its floor with a powerful spray of water. The second time she managed to get her head out the window first, giving the Darkball flying alongside them a nasty surprise.

By the time she was about to throw up a third time, they had left the emaciated woods far behind and were cruising across a stone plain latticed with cracks. The cracks were more like small gorges—each only a little less wide than Vanitas was tall—but the Blessed Coach could jump them without difficulty. There were some advantages to having a carriage with a degree of sentience.

Once they landed on a platform larger than most of the others, Vanitas patted the inside of his Inversed, signaling it to slow down. It bounced a little, happy at his attention, before lurching to a stop.

Vanitas stuck his head out the left window and vaporized the few Darkballs and Wyverns that had managed to keep up with them. After they were gone, Aqua let out the breath she'd been holding and practically dove out the opposite window.

"Hey, watch it with that thing!" he had to remind her.

She barely turned off her Wayfinder before its guiding beam seared a hole in his Inversed. He had created a special window in the Blessed Coach just for the beam to escape through, but it only worked so long as Aqua confined the light to its proper place.

She barely mumbled a "Sorry," excited as she was to put feet on land again. As if a personal carriage ride was less luxurious than grinding their way through hordes of Heartless on foot.

"Don't mind her. You did good," he murmured to the Inversed, placing a hand on its silky smooth outside.

It rubbed up against him with its pumpkin-shaped body and hugged him with its arm-vines.

"Hey, hey! Just 'cause I didn't call you an idiot doesn't mean you can squeeze me to death!" He tried to shove it back, and its grip loosened a bit. "We'll give you a chance to play again tomorrow."

While it was still hugging him, he absorbed its positivity. The emotions hit him like a wave of cold water—refreshing but overwhelming at the same time. He stumbled and took a deep breath to regain his balance.

"Any chance we've got some food left?" he asked Aqua, who was standing near the edge of the stone pillar, staring off into space. "Aqua?"

"Come here. You should see this," she called to him.

When he approached, he saw that her face was troubled.

Then he saw what she was looking at, and realized why. They had been moving too quickly to tell while in the Coach, but a dark black mist wafted up from the chasms between the platforms. The second after he saw it, the nauseating stench hit his nose. He swallowed, breathing more shallowly after that.

"We're in the Realm of Darkness, Aqua. Surprise, there's darkness."

"But it looks just like…"

"It looks just like the Dark Wind, yeah." He forced himself to say it without hesitating. "Until I hear it talking about itself in the plural, I'm going to assume it's just regular darkness. After all, the darkness you gave off looks about the same."

Hers was a little more violet than pure black, but otherwise it would be impossible to tell the difference.

Her face shadowed at that, and not just because there was darkness wisping up beneath it.

"I'm just trying to be cautious. For all we know, those chasms lead straight back to the Underground."

He shook his head. "I doubt it. We could see the ceiling the whole time."

"But we obviously didn't travel the whole length of it. Who knows how far it went, or what else was down there?" She shuddered. "I'm not sure we should sleep here tonight."

"I would agree with you, but where else are we going to go?" He waved an arm towards the horizon, which extended flatly in all directions, like they were standing at the center of a giant shattered plate. "You can't power the Wayfinder forever. I probably shouldn't have made you go on that long, what with you—"

"I'm fine," she interrupted, though she didn't protest when he cast Esuna over her for the tenth time today. If she'd played her cards smarter, she could've pretended her 'motion sickness' was only an excuse for him to practice magic.

"Your form is still off." Her voice was cold, clinical. "Your arm needs to extend straight into the air, not towards me."

"What's it matter?" he asked, a little annoyed.

"There are certain side effects to not casting a spell perfectly. For example, your mistake there gave me short-term insomnia. I might as well take first watch."

"Oh," he replied guiltily. "Whoops."

She ignored him, striding to the other side of the platform and sitting down cross-legged, her back facing him. What had gotten her suit in a twist? He hoped her darkness wasn't flaring up again. In spite of the mediocre lessons he'd taught her, he really wasn't sure how to keep her darkness at bay permanently—if that was even possible. Their best bet was to get her out of here before any lasting damage was done.

If it wasn't too late for that already.

Sighing, he laid down on the unforgiving ground and summoned his helmet. His hair made a better pillow when shoved into the smaller space.

He fell into a fitful sleep, worries about Aqua's darkness still pinballing around in his mind.

XXX

"What are you doing? I told you to take care of her! Something's wrong… Vanitas! Wake up!"

What the… what was that voice? His eyes shot open, but he saw nothing. Literally nothing—nothing but blackness. Had he suddenly gone blind? Or had someone used a Blackout command on him?

No, the blackness shifted, moved with an imaginary wind. Fog. Just fog… really dark fog.

He thought about trying to clear it with Aeroga, but was afraid he might blow Aqua off of the platform in the process. Instead he summoned his keyblade, tapping it in front of him like a blind man's cane.

"Aqua?" he called.

No response, as usual. Why was it that every time he called for her, he was already too late? It would be too much to hope that she had just fallen asleep on guard duty.

He nearly whacked her in the face when he finally stumbled upon her, laying down and shaking violently.

"Esuna," he cast, hoping it would work as well on Aqua's strange recurring sickness as it did on her earlier nausea. He even remembered to hold his keyblade up perfectly straight this time.

The glowing diamonds gently rained around her, and she stilled. However, when he felt her forehead, it was blazing hot.

Biting down a curse, he dug a Panacea from his belt. The strange red pot wasn't one he used often; it took him a moment to unscrew the lid. Inside, rather than a liquid like a potion, was a pinkish salve. Aqua began to shiver again as he gooped it out and slathered it across her face.

She coughed and sluggishly ran her fingers down the side of her cheek, leaving a three parallel trails. Those began to disappear as the goop dissolved into her skin.

"Ugh. Panacea? Esuna didn't work?"

"Mine didn't, at least," he muttered.

Would he ever get the hang of healing magic? Their lives could literally depend on the answer. In the meantime, he'd have to kill some more Scrappers.

She blinked her eyes open.

"It's still here… the darkness. It rose out of the chasms while you were sleeping. That's the last thing I remember."

He cast Aeroga, blowing some of the fog away momentarily, but it quickly swirled back to its original suffocating position. As it returned, he felt a surge of anger. Not his own. As if the mist itself was angry. It swirled more violently, whipping across his face. Reflexively he tried to blast it away again, but it only pressed down on him, heavy, like an evil wool blanket.

"Alright, this isn't good," he said while trying to keep his mouth as closed as possible.

"I might have enough magic to do something," she said, sitting up. "Cast Aeroga again."

He followed her instructions, grateful that Aero was the one element she never saw the need to correct. Once the air around them was clear, Aqua threw up her hands, summoning a domelike barrier, a larger version of the kind she sometimes used in battle.

"I can hold it… for a little while." She winced. "Do you believe this is connected to the Dark Wind now?"

"It hasn't started talking yet, has it?"

She grunted. Maybe it hadn't started talking, but it did seem to be trying to pierce her barrier. The formless tendrils of mist wove together, spiraling into thicker, sharper tentacles.

"Doesn't mean it's not dangerous," he relented, already working on summoning an Inversed.

It was harder to grab hold of the positivity in an emergency, with spikes of mist jabbing towards their sanctuary, but he closed his eyes and forced his fear aside. Thankfully, the emotions the Blessed Coach had left behind were still close to the surface.

"My Inversed won't fit in here with us," he warned. "Be ready to break when I give the signal."

She groaned under the weight of her barrier and the force pressing on it.

"What's the signal?"

His orb of light expanded as quickly as he dared.

"The signal is now!"

"Now?"

"Yes, now! Go!"

The barrier shattered, just as the Blessed Coach swelled to its full size. Wheels spiraled out; windows appeared. He and Aqua dove in as the darkness rushed for them.

The Coach swerved into motion, but it wouldn't be able to see in this malevolent fog. They would die as easily from crashing into a chasm just as they would from suffocating under this darkness.

Risking his head out the window, Vanitas cast Tornado with a yell. The fog recoiled from it, fleeing and leaving a path in front of them.

Revealing the chasm coming up on them way too quickly.

Aqua kept her head on straight—she leaned out the window herself, keyblade gripped in both hands, and released a controlled blast of Blizzaga. The ice closed the gap between the platforms, smooth enough for the Blessed Coach to roll over, strong enough to hold their weight.

Vanitas laughed, punching a fist in the air.

"Aqua, that was awesome!"

She slumped in the carriage's seat, breathing heavily.

"You're welcome. Do you by any chance have an Ether?"

He shook his head. He had yet to recover any from the Heartless, and he hadn't destroyed enough Unversed lately to collect some from them.

She sighed. "I hope we're going the right way, then. I won't be able to power the Wayfinder again until I've had some rest."

"Alright. Try to sleep, I'll guide the Coach and keep clearing the way with Tornado. Long as we get out of these plains, I don't really care which way we go right now."

"I agree. Though I don't know how well I'll be able to sleep, with that out there. And all this bouncing."

The Coach jumped a chasm just then, making his stomach drop and proving her point.

"I think you'll sleep just fine," he said with a wry grin.

And then he cast Sleep on her.

XXX

Juggling a Tornado, an energetic pumpkin-cart, vengeful fog, and a sleeping Aqua turned out to be harder than he'd thought. He ended up needing some Ethers, and since they were inside the Inversed, he had to create and destroy other Inversed to find some. Not an easy task by itself, much less while barreling ahead at full speed and constantly refreshing his wind spell.

There were some near-misses where he had to slash through mist-tentacles reaching in the windows—they dissolved back into mindless fog for a moment when separated—but in the end, they escaped the cracked slab of rock. The fog seemed confined to a short distance from the gorges. When they burst through onto unbroken ground, they left it behind.

Of course, that brought new problems: namely, Heartless. Those were much more easily dealt with, though. Even the Coach itself could strangle and trample the Shadows, Neoshadows, and Possessors that crowded this new section of the Realm of Darkness.

Grabbing Aqua around the waist, he absorbed the Blessed Coach as soon as he could, and he managed to land them both on their feet.

Well, his feet; Aqua dangled uselessly in an upright position. He laid her down before springing into attack. It felt good to just bash on the Heartless again, blade through their chests, rather than having to snipe them off with magic.

He created a few Blue Sea Salts, hoping that along with helping him fight, they would drop some Mega-Ethers. Together they made short work of the Heartless that stuck around. A few of the Unversed were killed in the process, but he suppressed the pain and scooped up the Shimmering Crystals and Mega-Ethers he was lucky enough to get.

Aqua snored faintly. Had his Sleep spell really been that good? That would be a first.

He sat down beside her, deciding to wait a little longer before waking her up, even though he was impatient for her to use the Wayfinder again and tell if he'd picked the right direction. There were no black trees in sight, so that was a good sign. The path in the distance instead wound through pillars of stone streaked with a radioactive blue glow. The monoliths stuck from the ground at odd angles, some nearly standing straight, some looking ready to topple over.

No, that wasn't right—they weren't sticking from the ground, but from a formless void. Their only way forward was a narrow, winding path that hovered precariously among the pillars.

"That looks safe," he muttered. The Coach had maneuvered turns well enough in the forest, though; hopefully it could keep its wheels on this road.

But first, rest. After using all that magic, and after trying to keep his Inversed from getting spooked… well, he was ready to snore as loudly as Aqua.

Maybe he could risk sleeping at the same time. Thanks to their dark suits, the Heartless mostly ignored them, so long as they didn't use any light. He doubted his dreams would be good enough to summon Inversed this time.

That reminded him… what had that voice been, right before he woke up? He could've sworn it was Ventus, but that seemed crazy. Then again, he had talked to him inside his heart that one time… Maybe his other half was still closer than he'd thought.

He laid down near Aqua, wondering if he could go back to that place in his dreams. Ventus had given him some answers before; maybe he could help him figure out what was going on with Aqua.

As he was about to close his eyes, she rolled onto her side, curling in on herself. And then he heard a voice that made his hair stand on end.

"Yesss," Aqua murmured in her sleep. "Clossser…"