Kingdom Hearts fic: Priorities

[mistressofmuses]

Summary: Decades ago, during a period of unrest in Radiant Garden, valuable books were stolen from the Hollow Bastion library. Now Kairi has found a potential lead on where to find them, taking her, Riku, and Sora on an expedition to seek them out.

Day 16 of AU-gust: Treasure Hunters
Surprisingly, my biggest issue with this story was making sure it was clearly an AU! It kept feeling like it could just be something post-canon, haha. As with many of these, there are aspects that I wish I could have gone into more detail with, but just couldn't make happen with such a short timeframe! But I definitely have a huge soft spot for librarian Kairi.
(It probably goes without saying, but this is Very Bad [and unrealistic] Cave Exploration. It's a fun fantasy story, not a guide to safe caving, lol.)

---

Kairi wiped sweat off her forehead as she paused to consult the journal.

The others stepped up behind her. Sora looked over her shoulder while Riku passed him a canteen of water.

“Are we lost?” he asked.

“Of course not,” she said, frowning at the journal pages. The journal included a map, but the man who’d drawn it… had not been much of an artist.

“Of course we are,” Riku contradicted her. “Wouldn’t be a trip into uncharted jungle if we didn’t get lost.” He took the water back from Sora and offered it to Kairi.

She absently took a few sips. It was at least cooler than the ambient temperature, if not really cold anymore. “It’s not uncharted. This guy”—she waved the journal—“and his group were here. I just don’t see anything even close to a cave system around here…”

“Pretty sure you can’t see anything except trees,” Sora said. “What if we passed right by a cave entrance, and we just couldn’t quite see it?”

Kairi groaned.

Riku cuffed Sora gently on the back of the head. “Don’t even say that.”

“Sorry, was I taking over your role as the pessimist?” Sora stuck his tongue out.

“Need somebody to balance the two of you out,” said Riku.

Kairi was still staring at the journal, flipping back to surrounding entries as if they’d reveal some clue she hadn’t picked up on before. As if she hadn’t memorized most of it. “And we are properly grateful for that,” she said, only half listening to them.

“You’d better be properly grateful. How many ridiculous expeditions like this have I followed you two on?”

“You love it,” she teased.

“And both of you. But my point stands.”

“Please.” Sora wrinkled his nose. “Like you’d let either of us go on this kind of thing without you.”

“And you’re sure this journal is the real thing?” Riku asked, not for the first time. “Not just some fake, or a work of convincing fiction?”

“I know it’s real,” Kairi said. “Or do you doubt my authentication work?”

The journal had been donated, along with several rare and valuable tomes, to her library by the journal-writer’s granddaughter. Her grandfather, a man named Janus, had been a scholar with quite the rare book collection. Unfortunately, most of the volumes were stolen.

According to his journal, Janus had been hired as a young man by a group of thieves. They wanted him to help them plan heists and determine the value of objects less obvious than precious metals or gems. In return, he got a cut of their take, and any books they could steal from their targets.

At one point, one of the targets had been Hollow Bastion, the castle that served as the seat of power for the kingdom of Radiant Garden.

It wasn’t a time that anyone spoke too much of. There’d been unrest in Radiant Garden, with various factions vying for power. The generally peaceful king had been overthrown, there was an impostor pretending to be the old king, then the castle had fallen into enemy hands, until the faction loyal to the old king seized it back…

It was certainly a fascinating piece of not-so-distant history, but it didn’t mean that everyone who’d experienced it was keen to relive it.

Unfortunately, during the height of the chaos surrounding the impostor king’s brief reign, several treasures had been stolen from Hollow Bastion. The items stolen included the typical targets of gold and jewels, but also some of the library’s one-of-a-kind books.

The woman who’d made the recent donation had hoped to return what she could, which Kairi was incredibly grateful for. Several of those volumes had been truly irreplaceable. Sadly, it represented less than half of what had been taken.

But Janus’ journal hinted at what may have happened to the rest: a thieves’ cache, hidden deep in the southern jungle.

The thieves were captured shortly after, but Janus was spared due to familial connections. After that, he allegedly led a more upstanding life, aside from keeping his collection of stolen books.

Kairi hadn’t just taken the journal at face value; she’d spoken more to Janus’ granddaughter, as well as to others who’d known him. She used the tools available to her as one of the librarians to determine that the paper, the binding style, and the ink itself was all of appropriate style and age.

She tilted the journal, trying to orient the crude map in comparison with the few landmarks they’d passed.

Riku sighed. “You know I don’t doubt your work. But I am starting to doubt the wisdom of trusting a criminal’s account to be honest. For all we know, he already sent someone to retrieve the cache, if he was truthful about the location at all.”

Sora shook his head and turned to the tallest of the nearby trees. The trunk was massive, wide enough around that it would probably have taken ten more people for them to be able to encircle it.

Still, the rough bark and living vines made for plenty of handholds, and Sora had little trouble climbing it.

Kairi and Riku both broke off their gentle argument to watch him.

“Careful, Sora,” Riku called up.

“Of course,” he called back. Kairi could hear the fond exasperation in his voice.

Before long, Sora was out of sight up the tree, disappeared behind a screen of green foliage.

“Let us know when you get all the way up!” Kairi called.

“Yup!”

“Is that a river?” Riku asked, pointing to one of the many unlabeled lines cutting across the map.

“Maybe? That’s what I thought it was, but we haven’t found a river. I’m worried it was a game trail or something that’s long gone.”

“Good thing we have a scout up a tree. Hey, Sora!”

“Yeah?”

“Do you see anything that looks like a river?”

There was silence for a stretch of seconds, then: “I’m about as high as I can go. And I think there is a river. Just a little northeast of us.”

Kairi shifted around, lining up the maybe-river on the map with the direction Sora had indicated. “If that is the river, then the cave should be… just a few more miles almost directly north.”

“All right, head on down!” Riku called. “Kairi thinks she’s sorted it out!”

---

Sora had in fact seen a river, and following it north did lead them to a cave.

“Are you sure it’s worth going in there?” Riku asked skeptically.

The cave entrance was pitch black, pretty much the very picture of a creepy cave.

“Absolutely,” Kairi answered. “If the cave is real, the cache must be, too.”

“So, let’s go!” Sora charged ahead, never given to being overcautious.

They had lights, though they didn’t seem to do much against the darkness. The cave itself was much cooler than the jungle air outside, to the point Kairi was almost chilled by it. The journey through the cave itself was actually fairly comfortable; the ceilings were high enough not to require them to duck, and the footing was fairly smooth.

The cave seemed like a series of rooms, heading down at a gentle incline. Fortunately, despite the proximity to the river, there was no standing water, and the humidity was lower than the air outside, which was a good sign for the books Kairi hoped to recover.

Finally, they reached an offshoot from the path where they did need to duck, before it opened onto a mostly circular room.

It was everything Kairi had been hoping to find. Her light illuminated a crate set up off the ground, containing multiple hand-bound books. She rushed across the floor, realizing after the fact that she was lucky there hadn’t been any traps set to protect the cache.

Sora and Riku fanned out behind her.

“This is incredible,” Riku said, any traces of previous skepticism gone.

“All this stuff was stolen from the castle?” Sora asked.

“It is incredible,” Kairi agreed. She put on a pair of soft gloves, and cradled one of the books, carefully examining it in case it had been damaged by the less-than-ideal storage. “These are hand-bound, hand-printed volumes. Some of them are actually hundreds of years old, completely irreplaceable.”

“I was talking more about cut gems the size of my fist, but old books are cool too, I guess.” Riku’s tone was teasing.

She did turn toward him and realized he wasn’t lying; there was an array of cut and polished jewels, reflecting the light he shone on them.

Sora had found another collection of jewelry, gold and silver bands and chains all tangled together in another box.

Kairi set down her pack, pulling out the specialized wrapping that the library had given her to hopefully transport the books in. It should protect and stabilize them until they could determine what restoration work was necessary.

Sora and Riku cleared out the rest of the cache while she did that, also taking care that everything was protected for the return home.

All three swept the passage again, but they’d cleared it out. As much as exploring the rest of the cave appealed, they knew they had to get everything back to where it belonged.

“I forgot that the cache might have anything other than books,” Kairi said a little sheepishly.

Riku leaned over and kissed her cheek. “It’s adorable how single-minded you get over them.”

“It really is,” Sora agreed. “Cut jewels? Precious metals? The kind of jewelry fit for a princess? Totally ignorable. But books…”

She laughed. “I have priorities.”

“Well, right now, I hope that priority is getting all of this home,” Riku said.

“Absolutely. I want all of this stuff to be safe again. And I miss real baths. And our bed.”

“Me too,” Sora said. “And I am so glad we get to celebrate a successful expedition.”

And even Riku was forced to concede it had been well worth it.