Kingdom Hearts fic: Keeping Score

[mistressofmuses]

Summary: Riku, Kairi, and Sora are each assigned to recover one of three dangerous magical artifacts, thwarting the evil wizard who plans to use them to take over the worlds he hid them on. But as they each approach what should be their goal, they find the artifacts replaced by notes. Someone has beaten them to it...

Day 21 of AU-gust: Professional Rivals!
This one may be stretching the prompt a wee bit. Though I suppose evil artifact recovery is a profession. Kind of. ;) (Though I think the intent was probably more along the lines of rival lawyers or scientists or the like.)
I originally planned to write something that was more along the lines of an academic rivalry, but couldn't find a hook that felt interesting enough, so went with this instead. Honestly, this also fits fairly neatly in the "Treasure Hunter" prompt back on Day 16, but is unrelated to that day's fic.

---

Riku had a bad feeling when he reached the cave and found a disarmed trap.

The research he’d done, the conversations he’d had with locals, all had pointed to this being the place the artifact had been hidden. People claimed it was an inherently evil place, that for at least three generations it had been known as haunted, that traps—even potentially fatal traps—had been set to ensure that no one ever got near enough to risk being possessed by the evil.

That all fit with the usual reaction to the artifacts. The wizard who’d placed his artifacts across the worlds had done so with a long game in mind. Seeding slow corruption, seeping into the very substance of the world, to pave the way a century later for him to take them over.

But if the locals were right, then no one should have approached the cavern in decades. And this wasn’t just a trap that had been set off by an animal or something—it had been professionally disarmed. The pressure plate that would trigger a spear to thrust out from the wall had been completely dismantled.

Despite the concern, he pushed forward. He came across another thwarted trap, a tripline/rockfall combo, where the tripline had been moved. It was now secured to the side of the path, leaving the supports for the loose boulders in place.

A pit trap was exposed in the center of another chamber, easily avoided now that nothing disguised it.

In the final room of the cave system, his light played over the wall, and the carved niche that should have housed the item he was searching for. But of course, the goblet was already gone. In its place was a note.

Glad you made it! I already took care of this one. Better luck on the next world!

Below the words, the note was signed with a five-pointed star.

Riku groaned. Exactly what he’d been afraid of.

---

Kairi pushed herself just a little harder, even though her lungs were screaming for her to take a breath. The spell was holding, and she was fine. It was just the sensation of not-breathing that felt wrong.

The underwater passage was long, almost impossibly so. The inhabitants of this world hadn’t yet invented the gear that would make such an underwater journey doable. Without the benefit of oxygen tanks, only the very best deep-divers could even hope to try, and all the ones Kairi had met said that they never would.

According to them, the passageway led to something evil, something that poisoned everything around it. A promising rumor, indicating that she was correct in what was waiting at the end of the tunnel.

The downside was that since no one ever attempted to explore it, no one knew just how far it extended. She’d been given a rough map, but it was incomplete, based on the recollections passed down from a previous generation when a few of the divers had attempted, though not succeeded, to reach the end of the passage.

Fortunately, Kairi did have access to something the locals did not: magic. The spell didn’t actually allow her to breathe water, but did directly circulate air into her lungs so that she didn’t run out of oxygen.

True to what the map had suggested, the water-filled tunnel opened up just a few moments later. Swimming upward, she broke through the surface of the water, and breathed in deeply. The spell remained active, but the action of breathing in and out was still a relief.

She shone her light upwards, and it bounced back off of a ceiling that seemed impossibly high. This was as far as the map had gone; after this, all of the divers had turned back, saying they felt overcome by the evil of the place. It was probably a good thing that they had done so; the artifacts were designed to slowly poison the worlds they’d been hidden on, but any living thing that came into direct contact with them without taking proper precautions could be at risk for possession by their will.

Kairi swam across the surface of the underground lake. There was a shore faintly visible in the weak flashlight beam. Pulling herself up onto it, Kairi found surprisingly soft sand. She rested for a moment, getting her breath and preparing for the next part of the journey. As she cast the light around her on the sand, she saw something that filled her with dread.

A set of footprints, heading up through the sand, and another set heading back to the water.

She bit back a curse as she scrambled to her feet. The sand extended into a dry pathway between the vaulted room holding the lake and the next chamber. This chamber was much smaller, circular, with a chest-high pedestal in the center. The necklace should have been on top of that pedestal, but of course it was gone. Instead, there was a folded piece of paper.

Kairi stomped over to it, and grabbed the note with one sharp gesture.

The necklace is already safe, but I hope you enjoyed the swim! Onto the next one.

At the bottom was a rough outline of a crown instead of a signature.

“Damn it,” she cursed, crumpling up the note and shoving it into the waterproof pouch at her waist. She’d delayed too long, and she had quite a swim back.

---

Unfortunately, this world had a very extensive understanding of magic.

Well, Sora supposed it wasn’t fair to call it unfortunate. After all, he loved magic, and had nothing against other people who did as well.

It was just that some magic-users had proved they shouldn’t have access to any power at all. Like the wizard who’d created all these artifacts. He wanted to prove that he could imbue so much of his own intent into a set of objects that his willpower could seep out of them for a hundred years or more. And then he’d hidden the items away on unsuspecting worlds, hoping to slowly poison them with his evil will, and pave the way for him to return a century later and take over the worlds as his own.

Unfortunately for the evil wizard, they’d figured out where several of his artifacts were hidden, and were working hard to find the rest.

Unfortunately for Sora, this world understood magic, and recognized the artifact as being powerfully magical. Over the decades, a cult had grown around the item, its devotees protecting it, eagerly awaiting the evil wizard’s return, assuming he would look upon them favorably for it.

Sora didn’t like stealth missions, but that was what this was going to be. Taking a whole cult on in a fight seemed like a dangerous strategy.

So he was doing his best to approach the artifact undetected. He’d made it into the pseudo fort they’d built around the stone monument that originally housed the object, and had even managed to creep through the halls without raising an alarm.

There’d been a handful of magical traps—sigils that unleashed entrapment spells when stepped on, runes carved in doorframes that would wipe someone’s memory if they stepped through—but all had been easily avoided.

Now he was at the last room, where there were sure to be direct guards on the final door into the chamber that housed the artifact. Causing a commotion in the hall wasn’t good enough; they’d be prepared for that, and never abandon their post.

This part might have to be done with brute force. Sora called up a fire spell in one hand, and a thunder spell in the other, and kicked in the door…

…and let the spell energy dissipate. All four of the guards were unconscious, knocked out by a sleep spell that Sora could tell wasn’t even close to having run its course.

If his success at sneaking through the fort had been more because the guards had already been incapacitated than his own skill…

He rushed across the room, tearing open the final doorway. The room served as a holy place of sorts, where cult members would come to pray to the pen that served as a promise of the wizard’s eventual return.

But there was no pen on the altar. Instead, there was a scrap of paper.

Sora let out a heavy sigh, and picked it up.

Guess I’m still the fastest. But at least I made it easy on you? See you soon, I’m sure.

And below the words, a heart shape with a feather diagonally across it.

Sora kicked at the floor. He guessed he’d better hope none of the sleeping guards woke up before he made his way out.

---

Back at Headquarters at Hollow Bastion, the three of them approached the king.

He raised an eyebrow. “I notice that none of you appear to have the artifacts I assigned you to retrieve.”

All three of them shifted glances at each other.

“Instead you each appear to have a different artifact.” He shook his head and closed his eyes, like he was warding off a headache. “Bring them forward.”

Kairi stepped up, presenting the chalice from the mountain cave. Sora held out the necklace he’d taken from the underwater cavern. Riku offered up the pen that he’d retrieved from the cult compound.

The king gestured behind him, and several of his lab assistants came forward to take the artifacts. They would all be safely neutralized, hopefully delaying the wizard’s return, and certainly helping to ensure the safety of the worlds the artifacts had been removed from.

“Good work, even if it wasn’t completed exactly as assigned. You’re all dismissed.”

---

Kairi tackled Sora onto the bed. “I can’t believe you made me swim that whole passageway for nothing!”

“You love swimming, though. I wouldn’t have wanted to take that away from you.”

She poked him in the ribs. “At least I was nice enough to disarm the traps for Riku. I could have reset them, but that just seemed mean.”

“After I knocked an entire cult out and left them asleep for Sora? I absolutely could have still dealt with the traps, but I guess it was nice that I didn’t have to. Even though it did tip me off that someone had been there. And I knew it must have been one of you.”

Sora laughed. “I am glad that we each decided to go after one of the other ones instead of our own. Even if it does mean we’re all still tied.”

Kairi shrugged. “I was going to try and get all three, but clearly I ran out of time.”

“I could have gotten the pen and the chalice, if I hadn’t been so thorough with knocking the cult members out. I wasn’t going to risk even one of them being unaffected and finding the rest,” Riku grumbled.

Sora reached up and hooked an arm around Riku’s neck, hauling him down to the mattress. “You wish. But that was a really great idea for dealing with them. I was just going to sneak through the fort and then try to fight the guards.”

Riku pressed a kiss to Sora’s temple. “So I did you a favor, you’re telling me.”

Kairi tipped sideways, landing on the bed next to them. “Pretty sure Sora owes me a favor. For real, do you have any idea how long that underwater tunnel was?”

“I swam it, too.” Sora stuck his tongue out. “It’s not my fault that there weren’t any traps for me to take care of.”

“I’ll let you make it up to me,” she teased, leaning up on one elbow to better look at him.

He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, and then pulled her in for a kiss. “Nice of you,” he said.

“I’m always nice,” she answered when she pulled back.

“Even when you poach my artifact,” Riku said, running a hand up her side.

“Especially then.”

After that, none of them were thinking much about the artifacts.