Kingdom Hearts fic: All Strange Wonders - Chapter 19

[mistressofmuses]

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The gardens fell away in less than a full step, replaced with cracked, dry clay. It reminded Sora of the fight in Traverse Town, the cracked skin of the Warlock’s monster form. The parched ground was a sickly grey-yellow rather than the black and glowing magma of the monster.

Another step, and the Wasteland blurred around him. It was like walking into a furnace. There was nothing else he could see in any direction, just the dust kicked up in his wake, hanging in the unnaturally still air.

On the next step, the heat grew more oppressive, making it hard to even draw in another lungful of air. He’d heard of deserts before; places that were like a sea of sand too hot for people to stand outside in the middle of the day. But he’d also heard of the things that made those places home: small creatures and water-retaining plants. This… wasn’t that.

Another step. Other than his own magically-aided footprints coming in, there were no signs of life. Not even of past life. No dried grasses or thorny scrub, no animal tracks or even bones.

This is really where the Warlock chooses to live? For all that he had seemed angry about what he called an exile, he clearly had no actual inability to leave the Wasteland, and also actively resisted attempts to change it.

The dry landscape rushed past for another step. What was it Riku said? The Warlock considers himself a ‘lone flower in the Waste’?

That was oddly sobering. It didn’t bode well for Tae, or for Riku, had he been lured out here. Not like Sora could expect better for himself either, but he was trying not to think about that.

Sora was beginning to worry about what was on the other side of the Waste, and whether the speed spell would wear off before he got there. Typical, he thought. You plan to fix things, and only succeed in trapping yourself out in the middle of the waste with no way to go through or back. It felt like he must have gone too far, but then the Warlock’s fortress came into view on the horizon.

It was the same color as the dusty clay, but not anything that had formed naturally. It looked like it had been ripped upward from the ground itself, in uneven, jagged spikes.

Just in time, because the speed spell was weakening, each step taking him over less distance than the one before. Finally, he stuttered to a stop, nearly overbalancing just a few yards away from the Warlock’s fortress.

There was no clear door.

Sora stood for a few moments, just staring, trying to decide what he was expected to do now. Just… knock on the walls? Call out? That seemed foolish, but then again, he couldn’t expect that he was going to sneak in; the Warlock had to know he was here.

Coming through the empty Wasteland wasn’t exactly subtle.

In the unbroken expanse of yellowish clay forming the wall, a dark patch of shadow began boiling to the surface, spreading like a bruise. Bits of shadow slid down the wall and across the ground towards him. Then they hunched their way upright, pulling up from the ground into a pair of not-quite humanoid figures. They circled around behind him. As if he could have retreated: even if he’d wanted to, there was nowhere to go.

“Please do come in,” the Warlock’s voice rumbled from the shadow on the wall.

The shadow’s center continued to darken until it became a true hole in the wall of the fortress, though Sora still couldn’t see through it to the other side. The Shadows behind him twitched forward, herding him toward the opening.

Sora took a deep breath of the hot, dusty air, with its faint scent of char. Then he stepped into the shadow door.

The immediate drop in temperature was a relief, though that was diminished by the cloying feel of the air in the… entrance? Tunnel? Sora tried very hard not to think about it as heading into a tomb.

It was not completely dark, as Sora had assumed it would be. Instead there were flickering yellow-green lights just at the edge of his vision. He turned his head to look at them, but they clung stubbornly to his periphery, refusing to stay in place or come into better focus.

Then he was through the shadow portal and into a room made of the same cracked clay as the Wasteland, still lit by the impossibly source-less light. It looked almost like an attempt to create the exact opposite of the palace in Radiant Garden, a hollow, dark chamber with all hints of décor and architectural flourishes stripped away.

There were pillars of the same stone as the walls and floor, though their tops receded into darkness, and Sora had no idea how far up it went. It was oddly like looking up a chimney.

Across the cavernous room, there was a throne set up on a dais above the rest of the floor. There was someone in the throne, though Sora couldn’t see him clearly. He didn’t need to; he knew it had to be the Warlock.

Sora kept walking, approaching the throne. “Hello? Remember me?”

“The nameless nobody of a merchant,” the Warlock answered.

“That’s me!” Sora said, trying to sound bright. “I think you have a friend of a friend of mine here.”

“Do I?”

Sora could see him more clearly now, lounging in the throne. The off-colored light reflected strangely off his hair, making it look darker than its normal bright silver. He also looked… thinner, somehow. Not really smaller, but less substantial somehow.

Sora cleared his throat. “His name is Tae?”

The rumbling laugh he got in response didn’t seem insubstantial at all.

“Please let him go,” Sora persisted. “Let him go back to the garden you took him from.”

“I think we’ll wait for Riku.”

Sora shook his head. “Riku isn’t coming.”

“You’re here. Of course he won’t be far behind.”

“He isn’t. I came alone.”

“You should understand perfectly well by now that you can’t circumvent a curse. Riku will come to me of his own free will on the solstice.”

Sora didn’t mention that he had circumvented part of his own curse, even if he had no idea how.

The Warlock raised his hand, though it seemed to take a great deal of effort. His face was still too shadowed for Sora to see clearly. Then the two Shadows, which Sora had nearly forgotten about, reared up and slammed into him.

They forced him back, sending him stumbling backwards and to the side, until he crashed into one of the pillars. And then they just… stuck. Like the liquid blackness of the doorway as it formed in the fortress wall, they oozed into something amorphous. It was gluey, pinning Sora’s arms to his sides and his back to the pillar.

At his surprised cry, the Warlock laughed again. “We’ll just wait, shall we? You’ll see that Riku arrives, just as he is bound to do.”

Sora couldn’t even say that the Warlock was wrong. If Sora didn’t find Tae and get him out of here, Riku would be drawn to the fortress after all. But even if Sora did manage to rescue Tae, how would they get out of the Wasteland?

Running out with half a plan, he berated himself. How were you going to rescue someone with a single speed spell that’s already worn off? Brilliant.

The Shadows holding his arms down were like glue. He was barely able to even shift his hand around, though with a bit of slow maneuvering he managed to get his hand on the hilt of his knife. Getting it out of the sheath would be a whole new endeavor, but at least it felt like something.

“Why do you want Riku so badly, anyway?” he asked.

It was a roll of the dice whether trying to get the Warlock talking would make him more or less likely to notice Sora’s hand tugging at his knife, but he went for it.

“Don’t you think he’ll be a lovely addition to my collection?” The Warlock swept his hand to the side in a slow but grand gesture.

Sora hadn’t looked at much more than the Warlock himself on his throne, but now in the dim light he could see two other figures, sprawled as if fallen on the stairs up to the dais. He squinted through the dim, unsteady light.

Maybe in response to that, or just out of a sense of drama, the light seemed to grow slightly brighter, just enough for the figures to come into view. Neither of them was Tae. There was one man with one woman. Both had brown hair; the woman’s long, and the man’s shoulder length. Neither was moving.

“Are they dead?” Sora asked, trying to keep away the panic at the thought of Riku joining them.

“No, Aerith and Leon aren’t dead,” the Warlock said. “Their hearts have merely been… locked away. They’ll be fine bodyguards, won’t they? Imagine my triumphant takeover of Radiant Garden, with two celebrated council members backing my claim. The fact that they’ll be under my control is incidental. And soon, add the Royal Wizard to my supporters…”

“Riku would never help you do that!”

His knife was almost free of its sheath. The bits of Shadow closest to the blade seemed to pull away. Sora twitched his fingers back and forth, trying to wiggle the blade and force the Shadows to withdraw even more.

“He won’t have a choice. I will control his fire demon.”

Kairi. She and Riku had both been afraid that Riku’s curse would be a danger to her, too. Could Sora really say Riku wouldn’t help the Warlock, if Kairi’s life were on the line? Even more than Tae… if Riku loved anyone, it was Kairi.

The blade slipped free, and Sora was able to bend his wrist at a painful angle to slide the blade through the Shadow holding his right arm. It pulled away with a soft tearing sound.

“It won’t matter,” said Sora, not sure whether the Warlock didn’t notice or didn’t care that he was trying to escape the Shadows. “Because Riku isn’t foolish enough to give into your curse.”

“How wrong you are.” The Warlock laughed again.

It was cut off by a tremendous crashing sound as one of the walls of the fortress collapsed inward.

Sora shut his eyes and turned away from both the dust and the sudden brightness of the sunlight streaming through the hole. But he kept hacking at the Shadows, his right arm almost completely free. He slid the knife behind him, trying to force them to release him from the pillar.

His eyes teared in the bright light, but he still looked over at the destroyed section of wall. And there was Riku.

Riku was still disheveled, even more so than when he’d gone back to Destiny Islands. The rumpled clothing was now also torn and singed in places. He’d haphazardly tied his tangled hair back out of his face, but not even brushed it. There was a smudge of ash across one cheekbone, and Sora very much hoped that some of the visible stains on his clothing and hair were mud rather than blood.

True love after all.

With one more jab of his knife, the Shadows released Sora, slipping back down into the ground and away from him. He stumbled forward as they suddenly let go.

“I always knew you would come to me of your own will,” the Warlock said, standing and facing Riku.

The dust in the air obscured him, but his hair was clearly dark.

That isn’t right, Sora thought.

“That is what your curse wanted of me, isn’t it?” Riku asked. “Here I am.”

“And here you’ll remain. I’ll have quite the assortment of Heroes to choose between.”

The Warlock raised his hand, more of the yellow-green light beginning to swirl at his fingers.

Riku’s own hands were held in front of him, as he murmured something under his breath. Nothing seemed to happen for a time.

A metallic, heavy sound rang out from somewhere in the dark recesses behind the throne.

“Your name was Terra once, wasn’t it?” Riku asked, voice gentle and almost sad. “One of the greatest Heroes ever known.”

Sora’s breath caught in his throat. The legendary Hero who vanished…

“Not for a very long time,” the Warlock answered, the light in his hand growing almost too bright to look at, everything else growing paradoxically darker. “That name, that life, the heart of him: it was traded for power. A bargain. You would know something about that.”

The sound from behind the throne repeated, followed by a scraping noise, like something heavy being dragged slowly forward.

“I might,” Riku agreed. “But was all of it traded away?”

The Warlock’s answer was a seething laugh, the sound itself seeming to slide up Sora’s spine. “Everything that mattered.”

“Are you sure?”

The Warlock raised his arm, his mouth opening to answer, or possibly to attack. And a blade appeared from his chest.

Sora gasped, almost dropping his own knife as he covered his mouth.

As the Warlock of the Wasteland’s arm dropped, the light in the room returned to normal, revealing someone in a suit of armor behind the Warlock. They had a sword raised, running through the Warlock from back to chest.

As Sora watched, the figure pulled the sword back, and then collapsed, pieces of armor scattering. The Warlock fell to the ground. Instead of blood, darkness was pouring from the wound. He seemed almost to shrink as the shadows bled away, withering in place.

Riku took a few steps forward, but by the time he’d reached the Warlock, there was nothing left. He’d withered down to bones that crumbled to dust before even hitting the ground.

“May you find peace,” Riku murmured solemnly.

Sora finally made his own legs work again, and he rushed forward. “Riku!”

“Are you hurt?” Riku asked.

Sora shook his head. “But Tae—”

Riku cut him off. “Typical. I come all the way across the Wasteland, and you’re already free. Probably shouldn’t have wasted my time.” The teasing tone of his voice fell a little flat, just at the edge of shaking.

“You killed the Warlock of the Wasteland,” Sora said. Unnecessarily: clearly Riku was well aware.

Riku nudged at the last bits of dust that hadn’t yet been wisped away by the wind coming in off the Wasteland. His voice was steadier when he said, “Terra was a Hero. He entered into a contract with a fire demon, trading something in exchange for access to the demon’s power. He had the best of intentions, going after a falling star, intending to become better able to protect the country and the world. But the demon devoured his heart long ago, taking him over completely. There was almost nothing left of him.”

“…nothing left…” Sora repeated.

Riku nodded and looked down at the fallen armor.

“So who was…?” Sora had half expected it would be Tae revealed in the armor, but instead it was completely empty.

“What was left. Some piece of Terra’s will, locked away. I just gave it the strength to free itself.”

“Locked away!” He suddenly remembered. “Leon and Aerith are here. But…”

He picked his way across bits of fallen wall back toward the dais, where the two council members were lying. Riku followed, and knelt down, placing his hand gently on each of their chests in turn.

“Are they—?” Sora didn’t want to say it. He didn’t know them, but he didn’t want them to be dead. “The Warlock said their hearts had been locked away. He wanted them to be his bodyguards, to help him take over Radiant Garden.”

“They aren’t dead,” Riku confirmed. “Their hearts are even still there, just magically walled off, so to speak. I can fix it, given time. But right now, we need to get back to the castle.”

Sora was confused. Did Riku somehow not know? No, he had to know about Tae, for him to have shown up at the fortress, especially in the state he was in.

“It was my fault!” Sora blurted. “It was my fault the Warlock took Tae! We have to find him.”

Riku stared at him for a moment. “You don’t know?” he asked, somehow echoing Sora’s own incredulous thought. “Tae was never in danger. Tae is the danger. He’s the Warlock’s fire demon, in the form its chosen to walk around in. Or at least ‘Tae’ is the name he gave; I’m sure it’s really something else.”

Sora felt like someone had struck him in the back of the head. “But he was in the castle earlier.”

Riku’s face blanched. “Then we need to hurry! If he’s been in the castle, he could still be there in some sense. Kairi could be in danger.”

Sora swallowed hard. “Do you have any more speed spells?”

Riku shook his head, and spared a quick glance for the unconscious council members. “We’ll have to do this the old-fashioned way. Hopefully I’ve still got the strength to raise a wind that can carry four.”

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