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Post by Deleted on Jun 21, 2018 20:13:26 GMT -5
ONE SKY, ONE DESTINY Red mist churned and broiled from within the expanding sphere. Its central colors brightened while its creator's residing power was transferred. Its own body was no longer the full bloom of a trunk, it was a harrowing withering willow of thinning branches with its arms slimming with each second. Once it was sure that every ounce of its transforming energy was spent, its grip for escape was let go. It understood that if it couldn't escape it could still destroy Sora from within.
Licorice tendrils ripped and whipped from their ingrained stakes in the mural. Bits of colorful shards were dragged along with the tentacles unraveling and undoing their claims of purchase. Three snaps was all it took for the entrenched trunk of the darkside to be loosed. Its back cracked under the awkward weight of its transfixed energy. Its form could no longer hold up its focused energy so it let its body be bent forward then pushed out. Its palms scrapped at the pace of a snail at the bottom of its fully-conjured red ragnarok. It would devote the last of itself to this power. Gravity took hold of its twig body and severed all remaining flesh ropes which some had not yet been uprooted.
In the gaps of glass there was were golden flecks of light rising from below, hardly noticeable with the damning eye soar above.
"Roxas!" Sora's voice echoed from below. A vision of the brunet would appear before the blond. He was reached up with his hand to help hold the keyblades.
Ebony hands slipped from underneath the catastrophic globe: the heartless Atlas relinquished its post as pedestal for its growing supernova seed. From underneath on one side the giant form retreated allowing the ball to roll of its palms. The cupped energy's slow momentum changed to a hastening drop once the darkside was no longer touching the surface of glazed masterpiece. Light flashed from within the borders of the deadly bomb. It split open from the zenith in bloom of its lotus like arcs. A shock wave of rage and desperation followed that flash flood of ivory ruin. The pressure was immeasurable and the heat seared the glass pillar as well as the black mist surrounding the battlefield.
The sky was blotted out, neither black or white nor light or dark. What would feel like an age would pass before anything could be understood in the internal space.
"You already know... you deserve to be your own person. With or without me." Sora quietly said, his form absent.
Glitter of shattered glass shined and shimmered in the short lived created by the nova's residue. Searing blotches existed in the afterimage of the anti's final gambit. They cooled and turned from ivory to beige then faded to gray and finally black. Lucid colors would likely remain in the eye of onlookers if they gazed into those low burning pockets. Cold and unforgiving dark-mist basked in its shallow brilliance of a new sphere.
The iridescent golden glow popped like a bubble. There was the boy and the stone seat on the floating disc of colored glass. It appeared untouched by the ultimate attack, the two objects perfectly whole. Sora's light was that glow as evidence of his essence resonating from all around. His was a desperate move, to be the ultimate defense against that final finisher. His heart like the pillar was reduced down to close to nothing. The boy was happy to pay. For the reward was greater than all the treasures of every world. His other was saved.
In this reckoning there was awakening of memories. The stone throne having been a mystery revealed its purpose. The cool facade warmed up and then undid itself. Like watching a puzzle in reverse, the seal over Sora's heart became purposefully shaped pieces, most no bigger than a fist. They spread away from Roxas with trails of light in the shape of chains or string.
These were the bonds connected to Sora's heart. This time it was the bonds brought up the memories with them. Once in place, the lights locked in a synchronized dance of many rings revolving counter to each other in a pattern. Each memory manifested as a pyre-like visages of those connected to Sora. Riku, Kairi, and more were all there. Familiarity descended with distance so people like Hayner, Pence, Ollette were a bit further away than King Mickey, Donald, and Goofy. But everyone was there. The army stood watch of the throne-less warden, still and silent.
The beautiful mural from before was reduced to a fraction of its gorgeous gestalt. It briefly quaked to alert its occupant. The glass floor below Roxas was no more than a two meters in diameter now and the edges of the glass were undergoing graduation transmutation in to golden flecks of sand. The meaning was clear soon Sora's heart would be gone.
"This is it. Take what's left of me, my memories... they're yours now... use them... so you can be your own... somebody..." The voice weakened, each word less and less like his voice and more of the echo until it was nothing but a hopeful thought. Sora's essence could be felt as a soft touch on the boy's back. But there was more there... emotions, joy the most prominent among them.
But there were other feelings. Final thoughts of home and regrets of not being able to find answers and see his friends grow old with him. It seemed he was truly afraid of being indecisive... he wanted to broaden his horizons, and the most important thing to him were his friends. Each connected person floated closer, their bodies growing in transparency but brightening. When they reached Roxas they would overwhelm him with the memories of Sora. They left behind a brilliant energy. For as long as the boy held that power... he would feel like anything would be possible.
Once the glass was no longer able to support Roxas it let him drift while drifting lower and lower. It glistened with the light of the memories surrounding the bearer. Then it vanished. A new glow appeared. The station of awakening for the heart belonging to Roxas. However half of its facade was an empty white floor.
The boy could use new power to validate his heart's true existence or he could reject the gift and face oblivion. the choice seemed simple but it was his to make.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 8, 2018 4:24:38 GMT -5
“A Keyblade wielder's power,” noted a shadow to Roxas’ right. The scent of sakura petals accompanied the unnerving attention of oceanic eyes. “How fascinating”
The intrusion on his seeming solitude joined the boy from his contemplation of Sora’s last remaining Light, shimmering like stardust in his palms. “This…I think it’s his Heart.”
“Correct,” confirmed a soft and crisply precise voice behind Roxas, bringing words from another time. “Like all of us, you entered the world without one.” As ever the Cloaked Schemer’s countenance was half obscured by voluminous pale hair. A single blue eye regarded the light in Roxas’ hands for a moment. “It has the power to complete you,” Zexion noted pointedly.
“I wouldn’t be Nobody anymore…”
“We’ll never get anywhere with you simply stating the obvious,” said Vexen, snapping chastising fingers at Roxas’ face in passing.
Faced with the abrupt fulfillment of his most desperate desire, Roxas reeled from the implications, thoughts racing too fast for one path to solidify. One thing became apparent though, becoming fully himself might at be the cost of his Other. His solidified self-hood would take Sora’s place in the living world. Suffering the whiplash comes when a qualm strangles you at the precipice of fulfillment, Roxas hesitated at the cusp of everything he’d ever wanted. “I don’t know if…”
“A Nobody doesn’t have a right to know,” Ansem’s resonant reprimand sent goosebumps up Roxas’ spine. The Sage-King leaned over Roxas, the boy’s subconscious giving him a far darker gravitas then the living man possessed. Golden eyes pierced Roxas from a looming eleven foot height. “Nor does it even have the right to be.” Scorn dripped like acid from the verdict.
“Yeah,” Roxas sighed, shoulders slumping under the weight of confirmed self-loathing. “I don’t deserve this.”
“Ehhh,” the guttural interjection startled Roxas. He turned to spy Braig’s scarred countenance looking back from where he sat at the edge of the tower, one leg hanging casually out into the darkness. “If they’re gone, they’re gone,” the Freeshooter advised with a shrug. “No point in crying over spilt milk”
Yearning and integrity did battle in the Key of Destiny. Thoughts of walking with friends a full-person crashed up against imagining Sora’s loved ones mourning his absence like triremes ramming each other to bits in the roiling waves. But even if he didn’t accept this gift, wouldn’t it mean death? It wasn’t like he could restore Sora? What was the point of regret? Yet, something didn’t seem right. It felt…wrong.
“Gah!” Lexaeus' fist broke his contemplation into the dizzying pain and warm wetness that trickled down from his nose. “What was…”
“Do I look like I run a nursery school?” Larxene inquired testily, indulging in the same term she’s used for their arcane training. Kunai clicked dangerously in her idle hands. “Decide!”
“Ventus…Sora, I don’t get this cycle,” Roxas lamented softly. "Their Hearts just keep breaking.”
“Different name, same fate,” snapped Saix with an dismissive wave.
“Wait! T-that’s it isn’t?” Roxas looked over the half-mural beneath his feet and back up to the Luna Diviner, Sora’s light illumining his widening eyes. “Just like the falling star!”
Saix huffed and turned from Roxas’ mounting desperate hope. “Don’t be a fool.”
“But it’s possible right?” The Key of Destiny implored, reaching vainly at Saix’s shoulder before the elder Nobody dissipated into selenic motes at his touch.
Demmyx shrugged from where he reclined on the glaze, a strum across sitar strings sending soft thrumming notes through lonely half-horizons. “Don’t ask me, traitor,”
The boy took in the bifurcation of his own soul as mournful music wafted into the cavernous void. The amber skyline of Twilight Town and floating citadels ended suddenly at the annular platform’s center. From there it was a blank grey wasteland, the formless sleeping unbeing that precedes birth. Roxas could complete himself or give his Other an other chance at existence. But it wasn’t that simple. With no idea what he was doing, how could Roxas even know he wasn’t about to annihilate them both?
“It is whether he jumps on chance as it arises that determines a man’s fate,” advised Luxord with a small smirk, slipping a card between Roxas’ fingers in passing. As the Gambler of Fate departed into the darkness from whence he came, Roxas peered curiously at the card’s illustration. Wind frothed the waves of a painfully familiar beach. A single star lit the tropical night, its calamitous descent drawing together sky and sea.
“What,” Roxas’ search for meaning within old symbols was broken by the card being snatched his grasp. Cardstock ripped as Xaldin tore it to fluttering pieces. “Still not able to hack it on your’re own?"
He was right. Roxas gritted his teeth, palm beginning the close over Sora’s Light. He’d waited so long for long this, to finally be alone, to be himself! Why was he hesitating when he was so close. Gah, it should be easy! He didn’t owe Sora anything. Let’s just end this and …
“Roxas!”
Hand still upraised, light glimmering faintly between the fingers of his clenching fist, Roxas looked up into familiar narrowed green eyes. They held his own reflection, snarling and envious, a radiance choking on annihilating animus. Axel’s smile was sly but kind, beckoning the boy back to himself.
“You haven’t forgotten? You made us a promise.”
A gentle touch lowered the arm that’d been about to commit an ultimate betrayal. Xion squeezed his forearm gently. “Never forget.”
What? Himself? Who was that even? Roxas wasn’t sure, but as his friends looked on, the young man knew that destroying Sora wouldn’t answer that question in a way they’d be proud of. That envy, stinging pain, all the anger that seemed to boil up from nowhere wasn’t going away time soon. But for his friends, to fulfill their promise, Roxas knew he’d have to transcend himself.
He slammed the Light down onto the featureless glass. Rivets of color carved swathes of another life’s vistas upon the gray blankness. Palms, tides, faces, crowns, and interlocking etched his Other’s Heart into Roxas’ inner hollows. Yet, cracks began to crisscross the fused panaroma. A sudden stabbing pain brought Roxas to his knees onto the shuddering tiles, grasping at the throbbing beneath his chest.
“Wake up Sora!”
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Post by Deleted on Jul 10, 2018 19:13:50 GMT -5
ONE SKY, ONE DESTINY Wake up Sora... the voices spoke after the burdened blond, repeating his longing words and accepting his selfless will. Countless tones and pitches of an endless choir whispered, yelled, and spoke through the hollow of the dual wielder. Their voices echoed all around but the more they spoke the brighter the mural became.
The pain he felt was from the bonds of those who were connected. Their chains and strings of memory and fate were tethering through the nobody. He was made a needle for the thread that would sew together one heart with another. The floor of glass was renewed, its simple gray becoming the face of another heart. Color burst in several places then bleed into circles, lines, and shapes. Slowly the window of the nobody depicted not just one, but two beings.
The voices stopped repeating Roxas's phrase. Instead the air vibrated with the sound of joyous hearts declaring a new oath.
"Don't ever forget. Wherever you go, we're always with you."
"I won't forget." Sora said, his voice returning from nothing. His form manifested above his visage. The voices quieted as all had spoken. Their ties were knotted firmly once more. Sora reformed, stood over the twinned station with his posture plagued by the weight of the void's toll. He'd become whole but at the cost of his other's opportunity for completion.
The boy stretched his arms out and yawned as if he'd woken up. His mind was in a haze, not fully understanding the events that transpired in his absence. He did notice a huge weight was gone, his muscles were lighter as was his spirit. It was for the first time in a year that he didn't have a looming sense of dread.
"Roxas, are you ok?" He asked, seeing his other was on his knees.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 11, 2018 2:30:24 GMT -5
The Heart is kinna like a day, a spectrum of emotions we pass through that sequentially cast the same events in a different light. Just as a forest’s edge can be either a place of welcoming shade or looming maze depending on the sun’s position in sky, so what how we felt about something changes with our angle in time. Maybe he should livid about getting so close to all he’d ever wanted only to throw it away. Roxas’d finished going through hell just to come full circle, shouldn’t he depressed, caught between laying here in despondance and trying to strangle Sora?
Maybe, and he might feel that way later looking back. But then wasn’t now. Presently he was exhausted, wrung out spiritually in the way the Heart gets after taking a few too many dips on the emotional roller coaster. There was also that undeniable sense of equivalence that made this not quite full circle. Before he’d been tricked, forced, and betrayed into sacrificing his future for Sora’s sake. But this’d been his choice. Still wasn’t so sure it was a smart choice, but it being his made all difference. Just as important, maybe even more, Sora’d backed up his words and been willing to pay the same price when everything could’ve been on the line.
Couldn’t ask for more then that.
“Yeah,” Roxas confirmed to Sora’s question and he rose a bit unsteadily from the glazed floor. Softly textured carnelian and amber hues formed the contoured differentiations between solidity and shade that was Twilight Town’s skyline, and perhaps Roxas’ own experience of the world. Its washed out sepia colors evoked an old photograph, a combination of obscurity and wistfulness. Beneath Sora’s feet gleamed azure swathes of lapis lazuli that met broad stretches of agates and emeralds as waves crashed upon palm dotted beaches beneath a bright literally crystal clear sky. Roxas might be not be able approach life in the same way that Sora did, but that didn’t really matter. At the station’s center was a star of incandescent diamond. At its heart were portraits of those both boys held dear. Those familiar faces, wreathed in blood-red rubies and gold gilding, bridged the gap between the skies of Destiny and Twilight, making them one.
“I’ll be alright.” Roxas affirmed again with more conviction. “What about you Sora?” Cerulean eyes looked his other up and down as if checking to see that all limbs were accounted for. “That was a really close call.” Roxas swallowed, a glance away acknowledging his central part in things going to hell.
“This was my fault,” admitted Roxas without equivocation, reaching up to scratch the back of his head. The weigh of what his moment of pique had nearly cost them drew the boy’s shoulders downward. “I don’t …” A sigh followed a shake of the head as words ran out. “I screwed up.”
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Post by Deleted on Jul 15, 2018 13:28:12 GMT -5
ONE SKY, ONE DESTINY "Screwed up? No way. We're both here, right?" The brunet shot a glance at the shining stained glass. His eyes lingered. In this dimmed cathedral of their combined heart, the boy knew at once what it meant with both of them painted on the pulchritudinous pane. Unity. The boy looked back at this Other... no... he was more than that now. This person was his other half, full and official no longer a shell but instead a completing part with his own unique pairing portion. Sure it meant that Roxas wasn't free of Sora. But it did meant that the blond had an elevated existence, a being with an identity. Maybe that would be empowering.
"And that darkness... from my nightmare is gone. I can't feel it weighing me down." For that he expressed sincerity in his eyes and smile, a true thankfulness that couldn't be repaid easily.
"In your heart... I mean our heart... there's something else. So many voices. It's like everyone is connected." He felt the heart beat of a thousand lights. They pulsated like stars in the sky. Most hearts were pulsating with joy but a few were sleeping or wrung with darkness that growled with rage and anguish. Darkness was still there.
"Now they're relying on us both. I mean... they need you as much as I do."
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Post by Deleted on Aug 6, 2018 18:52:39 GMT -5
Unable to refute the conspicuous truth there, Roxas chuckled and ran a hand through his hair. His wounds from the ordeal were gone, being injuries more of spirit then flesh. Yet weariness, that bone-deep kind of exhaustion that comes when’ve been emotionally squeezed like a sponge. But with that tiredness came the relief of survival, the simple thankfulness that came with being reminded that despite everything they’d both made it out ok somehow. “Yup,” he said with a bushed grin that wordlessly acknowledged Sora’s graceful forgiveness without belaboring it,”that’s what matters.”
Sora’s own unspoken thanks evinced a blink and slight blush around the neck and ears. The more introverted of the boys felt his companions earnestness in a deep place, and didn’t know how to carry it. “Good, we’ll have to keep a look-out for it.”
His Other went on to confirm something Roxas had felt but couldn’t put the words to till now. “Sometimes,” Roxas ventured cautiously, “when I draw on more Light then usual, like during a real rough fight or whatever.” The boy bit his lower lip while feeling through the words. “I feel them, just for a minute but still…” Roxas let out a long breath in emphatic expression of the dizzying ‘bigness’ of it all. “Is it like that for you?”
Sora had a real knack for dropping weighty stuff suddenly. It was enough to give a guy whiplash. Roxas wasn’t sure it he was up to such a momental responsibility and had even deeper darker doubts as to whether the Worlds really needed them both separately. Yet something stronger then those insecurities answered: “I’ll try not to let them down.”
Into the cathedral window in the benighted void came the sound of waves. Gulls cried in some ethereal distance while unseen tides slid over sand.
“I think we’re waking up.”
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