Clarity
| Clarity | |
|---|---|
| Date of Cutscene: | 26 November 2012 |
| Location: | Hollow Bastion |
| Synopsis: | Riku takes time to reflect on a redefined purpose while awakening in a familiar place from a strange and unsettling blackout. |
| Cast of Characters: | Riku |
He knew where he was. He just didn’t know why.
Riku sat up in bed, a set of clean clothes neatly on the dresser beside him. The dark thornwood gleamed in the dim gloom of the large bedroom. The room smelled of warm oatmeal and honey and he chased around the thoughts in his head while getting dressed and walking out onto the tower balcony. Another storm was rolling over the sheer, watery horizon of Hollow Bastion and Riku leaned his arms on the metal railing to watch the flickering lances of red lightning far in the distance.
Had he been summoned here? Usually this was a much less pleasant experience. Then again, he’s been recently surprised by how much a little reserved judgment has bought him. Riku remembered the caravan, trading insults with another mercenary with an exploding blade. The marsh serpent. He frowned as he remembered the duel with Ivo and mentally reminds himself to practice longer and more frequently. His method of beating the custard out of people when they deserved it didn’t work with something as inconvenient as losing.
Riku felt a trembling chill work its way up his spine at the casual line of thought.
Rain.
He’s running. Away from someone? Towards? No. He’s chasing. He’s in a city, probably Manhattan because the streets look different in Luca or Traverse town. It’s raining and he’s chasing.. something.
Riku shakes his head and turns away from the balcony to go back inside. He sits on the edge of the too large maroon bed, sinking into the bed as if it were quicksand. Something glitters on the floor near the dresser.
A key. A black metal key. Rough and angular with an intricate inner design that he vaguely recalls seeing from somewhere. He was reading a book from a Library. No. Notes. He was reading his journal notes and he had sketched the shape of this key across the pages.
He’d won all three art pieces. At the time he had thought it too much, too obvious, him who had nothing to give pretending to fit in and not glare a hole in Mr. Smith’s head big enough to pass a coconut through. Hawke Transportation indeed.
Riku puts the key carefully on the dresser with a faint click.
It had to be a quiet and methodical thrashing. That much he knew.
He had screamed himself hollow into his arms and the muffling carpet. He’d been terrified of something. Someone? Riku frowns to himself as the memory fractures and slips away from him. Distractedly he goes to demand breakfast and receives it, barely paying attention to the food as he sits on the floor up against the luxuriant bed. He keeps trying to piece together the hole in his life. That he doesn’t find it strange to be in Hollow Bastion or immediately leave doesn’t occur to him. It was safe here, and he had other things to think about.
He couldn’t take any chances. So he had methodically, without rancor, destroyed everything they had just set up into the room he was to stay in. Nothing should lead back to the statue he smashed and then picked through the pieces of. Let them think it was a fit of anger.
Riku mulls over these thoughts. They felt like they belonged to someone else. Someone who had stood calmly in argument with a circle of madmen. Who had sworn fealty to the Sorceress who dominated this castle. Who had, apparently, picked him up and brushed the broken Riku aside and gotten things done. Eventually he had come here.
Riku was trying to decide what to do after breakfast with a detached, bleary sort of calm when the calm finally broke. The shards of memory coalesced into a whole and assaulted him. He had been running after Will and Leida. It had been raining and Mercade was somewhere behind him and Riku didn’t catch them in time. Instead he had practically slammed face first into a wall of darkness. I’m not strong enough. He’ll break free. The plan has to be perfect.
Leida had been hit by a speeding ambulance so hard she was knocked into a portal. Leida, who had given him nightmares powerful enough to drive him out of his mind, was now only a sad girl in the rain. Think about her and her nightmares later.
He can’t see it coming or the same thing is going to happen to me.
The strange thoughts and images start to feel familiar again as the pieces fall into place. Riku rubs one temple as he stares outside at the rain. He takes the key off the dresser, flipping it over and over in his hands as he stares into the middle distance.
Clarity.
That had been why everything had seemed so strange at first. For the first time since the storm, he had a clear and definable goal. He had a purpose. He had a destiny that wasn’t the lie of a stranger.
Riku returned to his breakfast, bringing out his journal after a few minutes and beginning to take some notes. He would have to work quickly.
There was so much to learn.. and perhaps very little time.
The TDA. The Shard Seekers. They were right.
Nobody can save the universe alone.. and there is always a cost to pay.
