Wandering in Darkness Part 2
| Wandering in Darkness Part 2 | |
|---|---|
| Date of Cutscene: | 16 September 2012 |
| Location: | Realm of Darkness |
| Synopsis: | The end of the beginning of the end.. of the beginning. |
| Cast of Characters: | Riku |
The darkness let him go the instant before he drowned.
Riku spilled out onto a platform, the teenager coughing out dark water as he lay groaning and prone. The rippling cylinder of dark water extended far above him and below. A series of platforms and spiraling stairways disappeared into the gloom in either direction.
“Fascinating.”
Riku continued to cough, brushing his hair back from his eyes as he pushed himself up on one elbow. When the last spasms abated he could afford enough attention to look around for the source of the voice.
And he was sure it was /the/ voice. The one from his troubled sleep. The one who had goaded him into—
“You didn’t have a light bright enough to escape by, so you took in some of the darkness instead. And it didn’t consume you.”
The sound of soft, pacing footfalls persist without their owner. A sickly green taint corrupted the outer edges of the stained glass platform. Brittle shards and bits of glass fell into the abyss below as Riku scrambled away from the edges. There was a crushing oppression in the air, the feel of an amused but completely abstracted presence studying him with the idle curiosity of a child contemplating an ant or a collector watching a rare butterfly flap vainly in a jar of poisonous fog.
The voice speaks softly into Riku’s ear, the teenager startling away even though there is nobody near him.
“Now is this an adaptation of last resort, or a more resilient permutation? I believe I favor the latter explanation. Those whose hearts are gripped by desperation and fear are the first to fall apart at the touch of darkness.”
“Just who are you?” Riku yells at the voice, pushing himself to his feet and edging towards the stairs as the green corruption spreads faster across the glass. No response. When no further words come, Riku is forced to flee down the staircase to a lower level or be dropped.
There was no sign of Sora or Kairi, or anyone else for that matter. From the fragments of the dreams he had before coming here, maybe that’s a good thing. If they were dreams. There were shapes waiting for him on the lower platform. Slithering shadows with yellow eyes, antennae twitching as they stared at him. There was hunger there but also confusion. As if the shadows did not know exactly what he was, or what to do about him.
“It is a pity you were too weak to keep the real prize.”
A few of the heartless tentatively edge towards Riku, claws flexing as he backs up as far as he can against the stairway. “But it is of little consequence. Your story does not end here boy, but if you do not grow stronger, how will you ever save your friends?” Something slides with a clatter across the colorful glass platform. It spins to a halt some distance away. It was a wooden sword. “What have you done with them?” but Riku is again shouting into the dark as the voice goes silent. The heartless lunge, and Riku slides underneath them, scrambling for the sword and a way to defend himself as the heartless spin around again to the attack. --
The battles that follow are a series of short and brutal ones. New creatures of darkness appear as the old ones fade away into swirls of dark mist. The mist gets thicker but Riku has no choice but to keep fighting. All too soon he is flailing at nightmarish shapes that lurch at him from out of the gloom and he barely sees them before they dissolve. A deep and terrible exhaustion settles over him.
Somehow the voice had Sora and Kairi, he was convinced of this, but he had been fighting so long.. for so very long. He barely knew what those names even meant anymore. He barely remembered if he even had one of his own. A faint spark of thought screams that this was another trap but he couldn’t see any other option. If he stopped fighting, the monsters would get him. If he ran, where was there to run to?
How could they see in this gloom? The monsters didn’t seem to have any trouble finding him. He could barely see half a pace in any direction. The wooden sword almost falls from his numbed fingers, limp in his hand. Riku stared mutely into the darkness. He was so tired. Just let them come and let it be over with.
He hadn’t been worthy.
Are you going to give up now? It wasn’t the voice again. It was a series of echoes, faint and hard to distinguish. The voice of his friends. His family. The warrior who had chosen him. And that last was just one too much.
“I’m sorry.” Riku barely whispers the words into the dark. He wonders why another monster hasn’t lurched out of the fog to claim him. “I’m sorry I failed. It’s all my fault. All of this happened because of me.” A flicker of nightmare. The shadow copies of his parents, crying after him that they didn’t blame him. That they loved him. He had wanted so badly to leave his home he hadn’t cared what happened to them.
Riku raises his head a little, but there was nothing that could be seen in the fog. Another shadow bears down on him from above. It knocks him to the ground, flailing to reach shadowy claws into his chest. His reaction is slow and sloppy, but the shadow is knocked away and then several hard whacks send it to join the fog.
Are you going to give up now? The question remains. Riku looks down at the sword. Everything he had fought for. That he had pushed Sora to fight for. All so that they would be ready. If the voice really had Sora and Kairi, then he couldn’t afford to stop. But he also couldn’t afford to play it’s games. Even if it was lying, which it probably was, he’d made a promise.
“so long as I champion the ones I love..”
Riku sighs, closing his eyes as he hears the skittering drawing closer again. It wasn’t like light was helping him to see too well anyways. “Never.” His head jerks and his eyes fly open as a smear of darkness slides across what should have been perfect darkness. Riku reacts on instinct, and a shadow goes sliding by him with its lunge averted. Riku blinks in confusion and experimentally closes his eyes again, turning his head towards the skittering now behind him.
He could see it. Not very well, it was no more than a smear of even deeper black against the darkness of his closed eyes, but it was somehow much better than he could find it in the fog. He decided not to think about how until later, if there was a later. There was only one of them. It was the same shadow, lunging and reforming and attacking every time. The rest were only illusions. Things for him to flail at and exhaust himself with. He swatted the creature away, his attention caught by a vague smear of light in the distance.
Wherever it led, he hoped it was better than here.
He made his way towards the light. He opened his eyes briefly to find himself standing on nothing at all and nearly nose to nose with the walls of dark water. Riku closed his eyes tightly again, not opening them again. Instead he ran forwards through the curtains of shockingly cold water before he lost his nerve entirely. He had little time even to gasp before he was falling again but the sense, the pressure of something’s vague annoyance and frustration cheered him as he left it behind.
