Well, that's hardly surprising. I don't look anything like I used to, and my Heart... doesn't exist, anymore. He had no means to recognize me. Frankly, it'd be strange if he did recognize me.
Still.
The ghostly forms of a thousand Keybearers... All of them, looking upon me...
I play the part, for the moment.
"What, don't recognize me?" I ask, theatrically putting my hand at my chest. "Well, I can't blame you, I suppose... I have changed, haven't I? My name, dear boy, is Drich."
He startles. "Master Drich?!"
Oof. That's a blast from the past...
I smile and nod.
He looks me over, frowning. Wondering if I'm lying, but his Heart tells him no such thing. "What did you do to yourself? You... became a Darkling?"
"Oh, if I was just a Darkling, I'd be a lot more recognizable than I am now." I shrugged. "No, no. I did worse. Horrible things to myself. Barely managed to live through it. How have you been?"
"Did you surrender to the Darkness?" He asks, staring closely.
I pause, and stare at him. "Did you or did you not just feel the Light of Kingdom Hearts inside me? I didn't surrender or fall, Ephemer."
He nods, slowly. Because he had, and he had judged me strong enough to resist it.
"Besides, what did I tell you about Darkness?"
He sighs, and repeats in a bored tone. "Darkness is not evil."
I'll ignore the tone, for now. "Attaboy. That was the most important thing to learn."
"Why are you here?" Another asks. A girl, light of hair and eye.
"To pay my respects." I drop the act. The husks of my friends' Keyblades flash into existence, for a moment, before vanishing again. "Here is where it all ended. Many of my friends died, here." I pause for a moment. "And, in a very real way, so did I. What about you? Why do you all linger?"
A few murmurs passed through the group. Indistinct. They all have their reasons.
"Duty." Ephemer says. "Master Ava selected me to become a Union Leader, but... Well, things went wrong, so let's just leave it that. I stuck around, and eventually found my way here. I guess I was hoping I could help out another, someday."
I tipped my head, acknowledging it. "A good a cause as any, Ephemer."
He looked up at me. "Is there anything you can do to help?"
Slowly, I closed my eyes and shook my head. "Sorry. I'd do it in a heartbeat if I could, but you guys..."
I looked over them. Looked over all of them.
"You're hanging on by a thread." I said. "A really, really thin thread. It's commendable that you've managed to stay around for so long, but you really should have died by now. Hanging on so long has drained your Hearts and Souls significantly. If I tried to bring you back to true life now, the effort would probably shatter your existences. If I'd come by in the first few decades, then maybe -maybe- I could have done something for you, but it took me a lot longer than that just to put myself back together. As it is... You're very close to death, and even if you weren't, I don't have any vessels laying around to hold your Hearts and Souls."
Though that wasn't that big of a problem. A fully functional Body was difficult to replicate, but until then, I could easily store them in some dolls or golems or something...
I paused.
And considered that.
They wouldn't survive that, not as they were now. But... One did not need to transplant the Heart and Soul into a Body in order to store it. So long as they were contained, through any means other than their own Will, then they should be able to recover...
"If... If you were to be bound to life by something more than your own Will, then your Hearts and Souls would be able to rest and recover their strength. It would take a long time, considering how diminished you are, but it would happen."
The thousand spirits around me perked up, considering me.
I, in turn, considered them. A thousand Keybearers, of such strong will that they'd held on to life for over an aeon, all pre-trained and possessing no links or ties to any place or people other than each other.
Recruits, a small part of me whispers.
People who could use help, a larger one says.
"Is that a plan I hear?" Ephemer asks, a spark of hope colouring his Heart.
"It'd take a while." I repeated. "Probably centuries to millennia."
"We've been here a lot longer than that." One of them points out.
I smiled. "You have. But, the point is? Centuries to millennia is more than enough time to prepare the appropriate vessels for your Hearts and Souls. I can't do anything for you right now, but give it just a little bit..."
"Life? Again..."
"Yes please."
"I'd like that."
The spirits started to talk, all at once, but I held my hands up. "Calm yourselves. You don't have too much strength to spare." I shook my head. "Wouldn't do to come this far just to give out right before the end. Anyway, I'll give you some time to consider what you want, and if you'll accept the offer-"
""""YES!""""
I paused. "Are literally none of you going to stop and think about it?"
"Do you have any idea how boring it's been, just being here and doing nothing?" One of them asked, a whining note in her voice. "It was awful!"
"She's right."
"Agreed."
"What she said."
I glanced down for a moment, before shrugging. "Yeah, okay. That's fair. Alright. Let's go get that done."
I snapped my fingers and a Gate opened up in the air behind me. It was a wide one. "You can stop moving around, now. Every bit of strength you have should be conserved. I can take care of things."
"Master Drich." Ephemer paused for a moment, his head ducking. "Thanks."
"Ah, don't worry about it." I waved my hands. "Helping out just what I do. Besides... I'm also winning this one."
His head tilted to the side. "Okay?"
I shook my head. With a bit of Magic, I caught the Keyblades in the air, halting their movement. In response, they stopped glowing, and the spirits faded away.
Hmm.
It's funny.
I came here to find some endings.
And I ended up also finding new beginnings.
Holding a Heart and Soul isn't too hard.
Holding them safely? More difficult, but, again, not that hard. A simple matter of a container, and something to isolate them. Their Keyblades already served the purpose of the former. The latter was three simple but potent spells, in my case.
I put the Keyblades in a bunch of tubes made out of diamond. Large enough to fit a person inside, with a variety of extraneous spells cast upon it. Protection, alerts, secondary Heart/Soul binders. If the spell cast upon the Keyblades themselves failed, then the tubes would take over for it.
Backups.
Once all the Keyblades were in place, I had Scala ad Caelum wrap them up in a pocket dimension, locked that pocket dimension with the Promise of Unity, and left the only entrance to it hidden in my own room. After that, all that had been left was simply sending the Hearts and Souls of the old Keybearers into a deep sleep.
It would be over quickly, for them. The sleep would help them recover faster. Even so, it would take centuries.
Until then...
Hn. Lots to do.
I turned away, and left that dimension behind, locking it tight. They could get out, but nobody other than myself would be able to get in.
Next came what I had gone to the Keyblade Graveyard for in the first place.
I'd hoped to recover the Keyblades of my lost companions. I'd found thirty four. It wasn't enough, not for all of them, but it was a start.
I had been busy, or otherwise obligated, until now. Now, I had almost a week of spare time before Takato, Rika, and Henry came by for their next lesson.
There was only one thing I wanted to do, in order to pass that time.
I wanted to make a memorial. A proper one.
I'd already prepared the area for it. In the underground floor of the tower, there was a special door, marked with the symbol of a key, a heart, and a 'χ'.
On the opposite side of that door was a hallway. The hallway itself was in a sub-dimension; a necessity considering the length of it.
In that hallway, there were pedestals, lining the walls all the way to the end. There were hundreds of them.
One for each of my companions.
That... was going to be my intended memorial.
I was down there in a moment.
It was wide. The hallway, that is. The pedestals were placed at an exact distance from one another.
None, however, had anything upon them. Only a plaque, attached to the front of the pedestal, itself blank.
I started, as was only appropriate, at the first, directly to my left.
I knelt down in front of it, my finger sharpening into a claw that began to glow with Magic.
Carefully, I began to write a word.
'Aarrone'.
The first, alphabetically, on the list.
He'd been a tall man, strong and stalwart. Loyal, right until his end, in defending against our enemies.
When I'm done with the name, I use my finger to inscribe a circle on top of the pedestal, glowing with magic.
Illusion. A image of something, not truly there.
I take care as I construct it. The Memory lingers within me, called forth, and I ensure with painstaking effort that the image is perfect.
Sharp features, defined muscles. The pose was a simple one, shoulders set wide, the tip of his Keyblade resting upon the ground, hands resting together on top of the pommel... Starring forwards, a slight smile upon his face, eyes bright with joy.
Hah...
Looking at this... The only difference is that he never would have stood so still. Ever the animate person, him...
I sat back upon my heels. Holding a hand out, I summoned the fragmented husk of his Keyblade. It had been broken into six pieces, only their sympathetic resonance telling me what they had once belonged to.
I'd put it back together again. A simple spell...
Still, it was a cracked and damaged thing, well and truly dead. Aarrone had passed on with a resolute determination, having given his life for his friends. The Keyblade, born of his Heart, had died with him.
Reverently, I placed it upon the pedestal. Thirty four, down to thirty three... A few hundred, now one less.
I was nowhere near done.
Alyssia was next. Wonderful woman. Bit of a macabre sense of humour, though. Her death had been a swift one. The battle leading up to it had been dreadfully long. Masterful displays of Magic and swordsmanship had killed hundreds of corrupted Keybearers.
Alyssia had fought and died well. From that point on, we had been careful to investigate the Darklings, trying to root them out before they spread their corruption too far. We'd even succeeded, for the most part...
Average in size, yet elegant in appearance. Her dress had been a complex thing. Her Keyblade, in strange contrast, had been a simple thing, lacking even a minimum of decoration. The pattern had been the most complex thing about it, an interweaving cross of green and blue.
I didn't have the original. Hers was among the husks not found. I'd have been surprised to see it, really. She'd died before the end of the War, before that cataclysm. Her Keyblade had been entombed with her body at a mausoleum, itself consumed by the Great Darkness.
It was unlikely to have survived. Unlike Daybreak Town, that mausoleum had been nothing truly special to the World at large. Merely... special to us.
Even if it had survived, then who could say what had happened to it? It was so very long ago...
Two done.
The third, the fourth, the fifth, the sixth...
All the same.
Each one, a memory. Each one, a precious companion. I reminisced, thinking back to the past. All the good memories... And the inevitable end that came with them. Those days had been depressing. We held on, nonetheless. Driving ourselves and each other forwards. To give up would have been an insult.
We'd had our spats. Some of us had never grown deeply fond. Still, we had all been in it together, and when the chips were down, we could always count on each other...
I never would have gotten as far as I did without them. I probably wouldn't be standing here, right now, if not for them...
To let them just fade... I could not let that happen.
They won't be forgotten.
I stood up, and walked out. The door shut behind me, plain and simple.
I turned, and pulled out a Keyblade. My one; the Darkness in the shape of the Kingdom Key D.
I held it up, pointing it at the door, before hesitating a moment. With a thought, my Keyblade shifted, becoming a little bit longer and shifting into midnight blues with spatterings of white. The shape itself didn't change much, the end becoming a little bit more complex, the handle's guards gaining a bit of ornamentation...
In only a moment, it held the same appearance as the one I had forged from my own Heart.
I did miss that old Keyblade...
But, from me, it had been forged. To me, it had returned. And with me, it had perished, crushed into my Essence by my own spell. I had not lost it. It had merely become a part of me again.
Which... was fine, really.
I am all that I am. And all that I need to be.
There's a lot of work to do.
So much. Everything I've done so far is just the first steps. Students to train, things to build, Hearts to keep, an Order to found...
Still...
Ba-bum.
The future seems bright. Fun. Despite the work coming my way, despite the regrets...
I'm looking forward to it.