"Alright, so, I'm going to be pretty busy in the next... probably three or four weeks. Don't be surprised if I don't show up for a while."
"Okay."
"Will you-"
"No, Naruto."
Scala ad Caelum was a very special World. Kingdom Hearts had certainly not led me wrong when it had guided me there.
The reason for that was something I realized after about three seconds of thought.
Namely, Scala ad Caelum was the nexus from which the Worlds had taken form.
Now, I mentioned that before, but what I didn't think about then was that, magically speaking, that was a very powerful sympathetic connection. That was a bond of origins, on top of the bonds that the Worlds shared as fragments of The World, on top of the fact that all Worlds already interconnect.
Magically speaking, if one wanted to connect the Worlds directly, Scala ad Caelum was the best place to do it.
And look, I even had the tools I needed to boost that connection further. I had some Gummi Blocks, coming from multiple Worlds (another sympathetic connection), and I had Keyblades, which had a very major part of their existence be unlocking things.
And that was just magically speaking. Heart and Soul-wise? Even more powerful. The Lanes Between are there, after all, connecting the Worlds together on a very deep level.
The means to connect the Worlds together more meaningfully, and more usefully, already exist. I have all the things I need...
Except one.
I'd need the help of Scala ad Caelum, the World, in order to set that up.
Everything else, I could do just fine, but without the help of the World itself...
Well, strictly speaking, I wouldn't actually need it, it's just that not having Scala ad Caelum actively reaching for the other Worlds would up the requirements for forging that connection so much that it was going to be unreasonable.
It's a little amusing, actually. The first thing I have to recruit, and it's Scala ad Caelum.
Appropriate.
Recruit a World... hah.
Not impossible.
What is a World? A fragment of The World, yes, but that's the obvious, no-point answer.
A World is a living being. Not alive, perhaps, in the same way as people, but alive nonetheless. A World has a Heart, and a Soul, and creates for itself a reality around it to serve as a Body. The three critical components of true existence, and Worlds meet the criteria,
Did it matter that their Body was a cosmic thing, formed of space and time, the substance of dimensions? No. It didn't. A Body was anything that could host a Heart and Soul, whether it was made up of flesh and blood, data and energy, or the fabric of space-time itself was irrelevant to the matter. Worlds were, by the only metric that truly mattered, people. Just... bigger. And weirder.
How do people connect? Through interacting with each other, through having their Hearts reach out towards one another. Worlds, in the end, were no different, they just had a lot more trouble actually interacting. The raw fabric of reality made for a rather impersonal Body. Worlds interacted with others at the level of the Heart, which only a few beings could recognize. Take the Elemental Nations, with its connection to the Shinigami, or Madoka, who had directly connected herself to her World, for examples.
Aside from those two people, who else in their Worlds could hear and understand the Worlds? None, in Madoka's case, and only a few other Gods, in the Shinigami's, all of them born of the World itself.
Now, that was mostly because of a lack of knowledge. There was, theoretically, nothing stopping anybody else from connecting with a World, should they know how.
I knew how. And on one hand, it was slightly more difficult for me, as I had no discrete Heart with which to connect to theirs. On the other hand, I was made completely of Darkness, and that made it a lot easier than it could have been. Like calls to like, and within the Hearts of Worlds, there is still Darkness.
I just had to be the one initiating it.
So I wasted no time. Off to the top of a central tower I went, and there I stayed while I felt for the Heart of the Scala ad Caelum.
There was no Keyhole. It had, no doubt, been sealed a long time ago. With no direct path to the Heart of Scala ad Caelum, I was left with only the option of simply trying to reach it underneath the shell it inhabited.
Given that it was the only Heart around, that wasn't very difficult. Actually reaching it was... slightly harder, but again not that difficult.
"Scala ad Caelum."
I reached out to the World, and the World reached back
"Guardian."
I smiled.
"Recognize me, do you?"
"Your shape is different, but that Light within and what it illuminates remains the same. The First Light brought you to me, but why?"
"Kingdom Hearts desires Unity." I say. "It is a task that I cannot do alone. I need to form an Order to do it, and to make that Order effective, I need your help. What say you, Scala ad Caelum?"
"Do you really need to ask?" Scala ad Caelum questioned, and I could feel the amusement that briefly coloured its Heart.
"Not particularly." I shrugged. "I knew the answer. I asked anyway because it was polite. That said, give me a moment to set all of this up, and then we'll get get this going."
"Unity... It's been too long." There was a shift, in the air. Something like anticipation.
Heh.
Alright.
I raised my hands, and Magic, the real kind, not the Dark imitation I had been using until now, begins to spark around me.
The three Keyhole Gummi Blocks I have appear, floating outwards in a circle. On the ground below me, runic arrays flash into existence, before rising into the air. The three Keyblades I wield, the Proof of Courage, the Protector's Tenacity, and the Guardian's Resolve, also appear, and quickly join the Gummi Blocks in floating around me.
I'm rusty. That's easy to see and note. So, I take my time, here, smoothing the flow, the circles becoming crisper and sharper.
From my chest emerges the mote of Kingdom Heart's Light, and I draw my hands together, summoning forth the Dark Partition, tip raised to the sky.
Above, the outline of Kingdom Hearts appears, a shadow with nothing to cast it.
Still, that's all I need. "Reach out, Scala ad Caelum. Call to the other Worlds."
I twist the χ-blade, and-
Ba-bum.
Across the Sea of the Skies, across all of existence...
There is a sound. The vast majority do not hear it, but a few do.
A girl in white pauses mid-sentence, taking on a brief look of confusion.
A god of death halts for a brief moment, his head tilting to the side as he considers it.
A few beings shift, and pause, and stop, and halt, all briefly. The reason is simple.
- the Worlds sing.