50

By: Aviantei

Act I: 50 Minutes/Abandonment

Scene XII: "I've never gotten the chance to see something like this before."

Axel was about halfway through his sentence when he recognized the spaced out look on Rhea's face; her hazel eyes may have been open, but they certainly weren't registering what was in front of them. Axel waved a hand right in her line of vision, hoping the motion would stir some recognition in her. "Hello, you awake over there?"

Unlike their previous conversations in the cafeteria, they'd chosen the Fifty Minute Rooms lounge area for the next Storytime About Roxas conference. To Axel, the place looked like a casual coffee shop he'd once seen in another world, with the orange light of a sunset streaming in through the projections of windows. There was even the sound of faint chatter in the air, as if more people occupied the space than were actually present. He had no idea what Rhea saw when she looked over the room, but that wasn't all that important considering she seemed to be hard set in the middle of daydreaming.

Rhea blinked slowly, as if remembering that seeing was something she could do. "Sorry, I've been thinking a lot." She rubbed her eyes as if she'd just woken up. Is she getting better? Or worse? Axel couldn't tell, and he didn't know the right way to find an answer. Leaning forward to prop her elbows on the table, Rhea focused her eyes on him. "What were you saying?"

"I was saying all sorts of awful things about you to see if you noticed." Rhea scowled and attempted to smack Axel's arm from across the table, but he simply scooted back his chair to avoid the blow with a grin. "I'm kidding, you know. But you might wanna pay attention or else I might do it."

Rhea huffed and settled down into cradling her coffee mug, which had dangerously started to shake from her sudden movements. "You're going to be talking about Roxas, right? Of course I'll listen." She'd probably meant for the words to come out self-assured, but they just sounded brittle.

Axel decided that throwing off another sarcastic remark really wasn't worth her potentially crying and simply nodded. "Just making sure you're on board before I go and talk without an audience." Really, it didn't matter too much anymore, but Rhea wasn't likely to spill her own stories unless she got something in return, and this wasn't the worst deal he'd ever locked himself into. "Make sure you drink that coffee now. Don't want you dozing off on me."

Raising her cup to her lips, Rhea took an intentionally loud sip as she glowered at him the whole time. Maybe he was lucky that she hadn't decided to chuck the whole thing at him—not that it would have burned, anyways. When she returned the cup to its saucer, she had on an overly angelic smile. "I always find that it's easier to stay awake when the narrator gets to the damn point and actually tells the story."

Touché, little missy, touché.

After a handful of decidedly uncool minutes of gripping onto the armrests and closing his eyes, Axel dared to look again. Miraculously, they hadn't crashed into the wall; hell, the wall wasn't even there anymore. Instead, they were back in the same dark world as before, and Roxas had flipped on the headlights, showing the bumps and shadows of the hills before them. He was still driving, too, as if he hadn't just done something that could have ended their lives in a dangerous explosion.

Hey, you're still alive. That's one priority taken care of. Now get your head back in the game.

"Hold up. Stop the car," Axel said, trying to get his bearings. Roxas gave him a quizzical look from the corner of his eye. It wasn't hard to tell his destination, as the castle in the distance was visible through the windshield. "Listen, are you trying to get us lost?"

"What's there to get lost in?" Roxas asked, but he gently pumped the brakes anyways, bringing the rickety car to a stop. Axel was surprised it wasn't making noises as it idled on the edge of the hill. Only once they weren't moving anymore did Roxas take his hands from the wheel to gesture around them. "There's literally nothing here 'cept the castle and that other place you said was probably a town." The vaguely petulant tone in his voice all but screamed, You said I could go to the castle once I'm ready.

We'll go to the castle once I'm sure we can get home, kid.

"The problem is that there is literally nothing around to use as a landmark," Axel said, laying his argument out. At Roxas's confused look, he gestured out the back window, feeling silly for pointing at nothing. "I know you can see portals and stuff, and orange is a great color for picking out in the dark, but are you sure you're gonna be able to see that thing once we get away from it?"

The sheepish look on Roxas's face was answer enough. "Well, I usually don't get too far away from these things, so…"

"Exactly." Axel deftly flicked open the lock on the door before pulling the handle. The crispness of night air filtered into the dusty scent still permeating the car, and Axel disembarked into the grass. "Just gimme fifteen minutes to make sure we're gonna have a way back home again, and then we can figure out if this old thing—" he tapped a fist against the top of the car "—can survive making it up that monster of a hill over there."

"Okay," Roxas said, shifting the car into park, "but only fifteen minutes, or I'll leave you behind!"

Axel chuckled as he swung the car door shut. Kid sure had some spunk to him, even if he wasn't serious about the threat. Even though Axel had given him approval to protect himself, Roxas still had a long way to go before he could handle tackling anything like a whole spooky-ass castle on his own.

So I just gotta make sure I handle this part of the job, first.

Axel could understand Roxas's reluctance to wait; he honestly hated the recon part of any operation, too. But it was a necessity to survival, so Axel got his head into the game and took stock of his surroundings. The castle in the distance was the first obvious landmark, perfectly silhouetted by the moon as it was. All it needed was some bats, and then they'd be in business. Axel had yet to encounter a world with vampires running around, and he would have felt confident in betting that this one would be the first.

Then there was the glow of light further off in the distance. If he squinted hard enough, he could make out the vaguest of shapes that looked like buildings, but it was difficult to tell with the distance between. They'd have to get closer to figure out what it was, but Axel didn't have any problem marking it down as some sort of town or settlement. It would be nice if they had a place to gather supplies, seeing as how Temperies was sorely lacking in that aspect, but there wasn't any guarantee of it, either.

And I'm pretty sure I wouldn't hear the end of it from Roxas if I tried to go suggest we check it out…

A short honk blurted out of the car, and Axel turned around to see Roxas leaning out the driver's window. "Are you gonna take all day or what?" Roxas called with an impatience that was only about half joking.

"Strictly speaking, it doesn't look like this place has daytime," Axel called back, earning himself a fresh eyeroll. He grinned. "Gimme a minute, I'm just about done."

It was quick work to estimate the distance to both of the nearby landmarks, as well as their relative distance to each other. It was unfortunate that there wasn't anything convenient to tell where they'd entered—all the damn hills looked the friggin' same in the darkness—but Axel solved that by fishing a spare knife from his pockets that he'd nicked off someone ages ago and tossing it into the ground with a satisfying shunk. With a little bit of magic, he was able to light a flare at the end of the handle to test it, then put the fire out once he was satisfied with the results.

It wasn't a perfect solution, since something or someone could come along and take the knife with them, but Axel was willing to bet people didn't have much reason to wonder into the hills. Not to mention the silence around them was too deep for there to be any wildlife rustling around—plus the whole place almost felt dead. It was a shame how some worlds ended up…

Stuffing his hands into the pockets of his jacket, Axel trudged back through the grass and slipped back into the car. "Alright, we have a checkpoint to head back to. We can get moving now."

Roxas waited until Axel had clicked his seatbelt back into place before pressing the accelerator, and they were off. The uneven surfaces of the hills meant they couldn't go at a breakneck speed, but the car chugged along at an impressive clip anyways. Axel enjoyed the breeze weaving through his hair and kept his eyes out for anything else potentially helpful, but only hills upon hills met them in the dark.

All the way up to the structure that the castle sat on top of.

It was unfair to call the thing a hill with so many smaller ones around it. In fact, it didn't look like a natural structure at all. Instead, it was if someone had plucked out a massive column of rock and dumped it onto the landscape for the sheer purpose of hosting an ominous building on the top. If that had been the goal, it certainly got the job done. Axel couldn't even begin to guess how tall the thing must have been.

Roxas wasn't deterred, though, and he set about driving around the perimeter of the hunk of rock, trying to get a feel for the place. Once nearly twenty minutes had passed and Axel was starting to think the only way that they'd ever be able to reach the castle was to scale the damn rockface, a miracle discovery happened. There was a path spiraling up around the edge of the mountain, thankfully at least double the width of a two lane road. Roxas let out a short cheer of success and pulled up onto the ramp, the steady incline not too hard on the car as he started the drive up the counterclockwise spiral.

There was more than enough space for them to drive close to the inner edge of the pathway (even Roxas deny that was safer than staying on the "right" side of the road), but all it took was a glance to tell just how ridiculously high off the ground they were after only a bit of driving. That distance grew worse the further they went up, the hills below losing distinction in the shadows. Axel was pretty sure it was in the running for the highest up he'd ever been—and even if it didn't win first place, it would've been a nasty fall all the way down.

Thankfully the road stayed wide all the way up to the top, where suddenly there was a whole flat lawn with plenty of space for at least twenty cars to fit on, let alone their dinky vehicle. Looking the slightest bit shaken, Roxas pulled them as far from the edge and as close to the castle's front door as he could before killing the ignition. If you stared straight forward, it was easy to forget how high up they were.

"You doing oka—" Axel hadn't even gotten half the question out before Roxas had flung the door open and leapt out of the car, as if the kid hadn't been looking nauseous about their little ascent as before. "Of course," Axel said under his breath before getting out himself. "Rox, you're not going in that place without your gear!"

But, unlike he'd guessed, Roxas wasn't sprinting towards the entrance, but instead across the other end of the lawn. He waved at Axel, shouting across the space between them. "Axel! There's another portal over here!"

For real? As usual, Axel couldn't see anything of the sort, no matter how hard he squinted, but he was going to take Roxas for his word. Snatching Roxas's gear bag from the back seat just in case, Axel sauntered over towards the blonde was standing.

"It's orange," Roxas reported, once Axel was in reasonable speaking distance again. "It must go back to Temperies."

"Well, it would've been nice if we'd gotten dropped off here instead, then," Axel said dryly, waving his hand through the space Roxas had indicated. Sure enough, the sensation of worlds shifting buzzed over his skin, even though his magically resistant gloves. "We should probably test this thing, just in case it goes somewhere besides the place where you think it does."

Roxas really was no good at glaring; he was no more intimidating than a slightly annoyed hamster. "I think I'd recognize what a portal back home looks like." Funny how he was so defensive about a boring chunk of space like that.

"And I'm just saying there's a chance there's some other world out there that's orange, too." There were a ton of worlds, and much more than there were colors that the human eye could distinguish. Who knew how accurate Roxas's ability was? "I'd just rather not get stranded somewhere if I could help it." It wouldn't be impossible to get back to Temperies, but it sure would be a bigger pain in the ass than necessary.

"Okay, okay. I get you. But," Roxas said, turning away from where Axel thought the portal was and pointing towards the castle doors, "we can test this thing after we do what we came here to do."

Up close, the building looked just as ominous as it did from a distance: dark stone made up the walls, with only the occasional wooden torch to light up the entrance, which was a door that seemed five times too big to be practical. Roxas didn't seem deterred by it, however, his eyes lit up at the prospect of adventure. Axel felt a smirk curl his lips and offered the gear bag. "Come on, equip up."

The two of them probably didn't look like much of an attack force being one lanky redhead and a skinny blonde kid with a bokken, both dressed in dark hoodies, but that was part of the point. On the chance that there was someone waiting inside, it would be in their favor to look as inconspicuous as possible. With that thought in mind, Axel kept his chakrams sheathed in his magic and lead the party towards the door, Roxas close on his heels.

The door opened up on its own without anything so much as touching it, which was just adding to the overall creepy as hell factor. Roxas stalled for a few moments, staring slack jawed at what had just happened—and then his face lit up again in a bright grin. "Dibs on going in first!"

"Don't run off on your own!" Axel said, but he wasn't too far behind Roxas's quick sprint. Axel took a moment to stick another knife in the door to jam it from closing all the way as a precaution, and then he really had to book it to catch up to Roxas, who had already managed to round a corner. Thankfully, the boy's laughter made it easy to figure out where he was, even when he went out of sight. Axel found Roxas paused and examining every nook and cranny of the stone walls, as if he could find a secret passage by pulling the right torch. "Ever hear about not barging into strange buildings uninvited?"

"Come on, the door opened on its own. That's totally an invitation." Or quite possibly a trap. "Besides, can you blame me? I've never gotten the chance to see something like this before." He spread out his arms in a clear indication of the space around them.

No, Axel couldn't blame him. There wouldn't be anything like this on Temperies—not just in terms of architecture, but also in the vibe of the place. The air was different here, even compared to outside, and not just because of the difference between indoors and out. No, the castle had a vibe completely of its own, almost like stepping inside the door had been another portal and they hadn't just realized it.

Roxas was taking slow steps down the corridor, as if just realizing he wouldn't be able to take everything in if he was hightailing it through the halls. "Though it's kind of weird, though, right? There were lights on in the windows, but it doesn't look like anyone lives here or is awake." Axel had to agree. Places where people stayed felt different. Not empty, not sterile. Even buildings with pure functional use had more life than the place before them. "What do you think this place is for?"

Axel opened his mouth to give a half-baked theory when the atmosphere shifted again, and all his nerves went on immediate high alert. Roxas seemed to sense it, too, though he wasn't as sure what to do. Axel scanned over the area, looking for any sign of movement. And then he saw it lurking in a shadow.

No, forming from the shadow into a creature. A small one, with a black body and bulbous yellow eyes.

"Well now," Axel said with a grin, even as Roxas yelped in surprise, "what's a Heartless doing all the way out here?"

[Author's Notes]

Slowly but surely, we're approaching the end of Act I! Just a bit more to go!

Thanks go out to xOxO Lost Angel OxOx for the story follow! I hope that you enjoy this update!

Next time, Act I, Scene XIII: "You're not the only one fighting this battle." Please look forward to it!

-Avi

[10.07.2019]