Skeleton Keys, Chapter 13.2

“So, our target resides in this castle now?”

The Dragoon nodded, bent to one knee.

The black-clad stranger stroked his chin.  “It would not be easy to attack that castle, especially not with them inside.  They have two layers of protection with those double gates.  Not only that, but they could easily pick off the bulk of an army with projectiles fired from the castle onto the bridge.  We’ll have to draw them out onto the bridge as well, but simple Heartless and even the Nobodies won’t do it; he’s too powerful to be enticed by them.  So what will?”  He turned his back to the castle, turning his face, stern with passive concentration, deeper into the woods.  “This mission will be harder to complete than I thought.  I need another beer to focus my thoughts.”  With a snap of his fingers, the Dragoon and its master disappeared into darkness.

…

“Man, was that a good dinner or what?”

“I’ll say,” Donald replied with a pat of his belly.  “Whatever that soupe du jour was, it was excellent.”

“That would be ‘soup of the day,’ Donald,” I said with a laugh.  “Personally, I preferred la baguette and le steak-frites; gotta love the French fries.”

Jack smiled and added, “That tenderloin sure puts meat on one’s bones.”

“I thought it was a filet mignon,” mumbled a confused Goofy.

“Whatever it was, it was good.”

“As is this,” Jack added as he lifted a bottle of wine.  He took a swig of it and supplemented it with a drink from the goblet of water in his other hand.

I paled at the aroma of the wine, and, politely, muttered, “Excuse me for not sharing your palette for wines.”

It was by this time that the up-until-now silent Belle, Lumière, and Cogsworth took a turn from this hallway and led us down a less elaborately-adorned one with a vast number of doors on either side.  All of them were covered in a curtain of cobweb, not to mention a fine layer of dust.  “Allow me to light a way for us,” Lumière suggested.  He hopped over to the first four doors and burned off the spider webs blocking access into them.

“These shall be your rooms for the night,” explained Cogsworth.  “Seeing that we are in our current form, we long abandoned these servants’ chambers.  They may need a slight bit of sprucing up, but they should serve you well.”

“Thank you all for your wonderful hospitality,” I said with a slight bow.  With nothing more to be said, we four retired to these generously provided bedchambers as Belle returned with Lumière and Cogsworth to her own.

When I stepped into the room, my foot kicked up a cloud of dust.  The entire floor and everything else in the room were covered with at least a half-inch of such dust.  Apparently Cogsworth wasn’t kidding about the rooms needing spruced up.  Holding my sleeve over my face, I made my way to the bed.  For a servant’s quarters, the bed looked surprisingly soft and comfortable.  When I took a seat on it, I discovered it was.  I stretched and gave a yawn, kicking up another cloud of dust as I flopped out onto the bed.  I placed my hat onto my face, falling into a deep sleep with the mixture of total blackness, exhaustion, and comfort pacifying me.

…

My dreams were of a different variety than the ingredients that produced them.  Darkness coursed in a violent torrent around me, as unhappy as a hurricane but with unseen restrictions preventing my engulfment by it.  These same restrictions held my body fast.  I tried to shift myself to see anything, but to no avail.

A figure that appeared before me saved me some effort on my body, but not my eyes.  He was barely taller than I was, his now familiar black robe hanging to the floor.  He kept his hood up, preventing me from seeing his face.  Further concealing him was the black coat itself blending with the darkness around him.  “So you’re the fabled wielder of the Keyblades?” he asked with a slightly warbled voice.  It didn’t sound familiar in the slightest.

“What do you mean by fabled wielder?” I asked.  My voice sounded different as well.  It must have been an effect of my dream state.

“It was written long ago in the accounts of the Jailer.  I believe you are familiar with that title?”  I nodded, and the mysterious man continued.  “There have been many Keyblade bearers throughout the years, spanning the history of the worlds.  All of them were chosen by their Keyblades.  You weren’t chosen to wield any Keyblade.  As to the true matter at hand, I have come to test whether or not you deserve the ones you have, the ones the Jailer collected from the previous Keyblade bearers.”

He held up a black-gloved hand.  Spiny strings of both light and dark energies ran down his arm, collecting in his hand.  As they solidified, the dark restraints released me, allowing my feet to touch the ground.  An object formed from these energies.  I had been expecting a weapon, but what he held instead was a black book with the sign of the Nobodies thrice emblazoned on the cover.

I smirked at him and asked, “Is this some kind of joke, or do you seriously plan to throw the book at me?”

“You should learn not to judge a book by its cover,” he replied.  To prove it, he threw the book up in the air.  It didn’t come back down.  It kept itself suspended in mid-air, opened up to a blank page.  I drew my sword, awaiting an attack to come forth from it.

“Uh, uh, uh.”  The figure scolded with a wag of his finger.  “We can’t have you cheating on this exam.”  A thick fog billowed from the book in a straight column right towards me!  I rushed forward to cut the fog.  My sword sliced it easily enough, but I couldn’t retract my sword out of it; it was stuck!  The more I fought to free it, the more force the dense fog exerted on it.  When I slackened my grip out of fault of my sore hands, the hilt of the sword was ripped from my hands and disappeared into the fog!  The fog retracted itself back into the book, completely disappearing with one last puff.

An image had appeared on the blank page of his book.  I looked with fear upon it, for my sword had somehow become a picture in the book!  What kind of book was it?

As I pondered, the book floated down into my opponent’s hand.  He stored the book in his robes, bringing out three more.  Each of these he opened and let float before him.  I took notice that all three of these books had pictures of my friends in them.  The fog clouds spewed forth from these books, depositing my friends on the ground.  They appeared quite shaken by the recent ordeal they underwent.

“I’ll at least be kind enough to allow you a few study partners.  Let us begin your exam.”  All three of the books that had at one point contained my friends hovered around, their pages flipping from cover to cover.

His weapons were set, so now it was time to draw mine.  Seeing as I could only use Keyblades, I decided to take advantage of that.  I drew two of the keys from the ring in my pocket.  One was the dragon-headed Keyblade I had used to seal the Storm Rider Heartless, the other was the variation of Cloud’s sword I had used on the Hydra.  I held one in each hand and said the spells:  “Fenrir:  Strength Boost!  Fatal Crest:  Teamwork!”  The Keyblades increased in size until they were truly effective weapons.

My opponent chose this opportunity to act.  He brought one of his books around to his front, its pages opened towards us.  All of us were now aware of what we were up against, and thus none of us wanted to experience it again.  Our party dispersed in two directions, one group going around either side of him.

The figure didn’t even bother turning his hood around to either one of our ranks; we thought this was a sign of our cleverness.  Unfortunately, this wasn’t the case.  The other two books around him flew over his head, one coming around to each group!  We tried splitting up again, but this proved useless; the books reacted just as quickly to us as we did to them.  The pages flipped open to a blank set, and the fog formed once again.  This time, instead of ominously coming towards its target, the fog shot straight at Goofy, seized him, and pulled him into the book!  “No, Goofy!”

I didn’t have long to grieve for him, for the other book soon snatched up Jack in its pages!  “Okay, now I’m pissed off!”  With swords held fast I rushed the foul librarian from behind.  He didn’t even have time to turn around before I inflicted a series of heavy blows onto him.  A hard strike to his head loosed the third book hovering around him from his psychic grip and caused it to fall to he ground.  I continued my barrage, forcing him away from the book.

When my flurry brought me between him and his book, I stabbed Fenrir into the book.  With my right hand now free, I called up a wave of darkness and forced my opponent away with it.

Something wasn’t right about my opponent’s reaction, or the lack thereof.  There was no cringe, not even an acknowledgement of pain.  He turned around and mockingly said, “Is that the best you got?”  The strange thing was that it wasn’t exactly him that said it; it sounded too close.  Instead, it sounded like it was coming from the book I stabbed.  I took another look at it, only to realize that there was a picture in the recently white pages, an all-too familiar figure.  My temper chilled slightly as the figure in the book rose out of the pages, taking my Keyblade out of the book as he regained his feet.  “You disappoint me.”

“How could you clone yourself without me knowing?” I hissed.

“Your rage may give you power, but it clouds your senses.  Your compassion for your friends weakens your focus on your opponent and your own strength.  You cannot hope to win without studying your own weaknesses as well as mine.  I think it’s time for you to hit the books!”  Without wasting another second, he brought the book up before my face and called forth the fog.  It caught me almost instantly, and I was powerless to resist it.  My entire body was pulled into the book.  The last thing I heard was my opponent’s haughty laughter.

When next I could think, I realized that I could still move.  I looked around at my new surroundings.  At first glance, it appeared to be similar to the eye of a hurricane.  I decided to call it as that.  The next thing I noticed was that there were books completely identical to my captor’s scattered throughout the chamber of winds.  The final thing I only took notice of when they crashed into my back and knocked me on my face.

“Michael! You got captured too?”

“Yes, Goofy,” I replied, making my way to my feet.  “It seems we all have.”

“Except for Donald,” Jack optimistically pointed out.

At that moment, Donald fell right on top of me.  “Present,” he groaned.

“How are we supposed to get out of here?” asked Goofy.

I honestly didn’t know.  “We wait for an opening, I guess.”

The wait didn’t last long.  One of the books, in fact all of the books, stopped in mid-flight, despite the force the winds exerted on them.  The first stalwart book I noticed flipped open to a page where a picture of our captor was emblazoned on the white field.  “That one!” I shouted, pointing my Keyblade dead at it.  “That’s our ticket out of here!”

As soon as the words left my lips, one of the other books flew straight at us!  Apparently their master didn’t need to be present to control them; good to know.  I intercepted the book in the teeth of the dragon head on my Keyblade and slammed it into the abyss we stood on.

Another book rushed us from behind.  Goofy reacted to this one by blocking it with his shield.  Donald caught the third one with a blast of fire, while Jack shocked another one with his Bolts of Sorrow.

“They just keep coming!” Jack muttered.

“We have to take out that one particular book to defeat them all.”  I looked all over, but that particular book was nowhere to be seen.

“I can handle this,” Donald quacked.  He took a step forward and added, “I’ve been working on a special spell for a while now.”  He breathed a cleansing breath as another three books broke rank.  They were almost upon him when he moved his staff before him.  Along the trail his wand took, a spark like the explosion of a firework went off.  The books collided full into the magic sparks, but they were deflected!

That gave me an idea.  “Donald, do you think you could use that spell to help us search for the book?”

“Sure,” he replied.  “What did you think it was for?”

There was no time to lose.  Jack kept Donald afloat with a gust of Winter Winds, allowing him to use the spell from any necessary angle.  Goofy and I remained by Jack, back to back with him.  We acted as Jack’s rear defense.  We kept up our guard, constantly on the alert for charging books as well as the one that would lead us out of here.

A large group of books gathered around one in my line of sight, preparing to charge out at once.  It had to be there.  I ordered Jack to bring Donald around to my side; he obliged on the spot, propelling Donald beside me in a charge.  At that time Fatal Crest started to glow faintly.  Donald’s wand also glowed at the same intensity.  Donald loosed a spell into the books, but this spell caused a massive series of sparks to throw the books around.

I almost lost the main objective book in the resulting shower of pages, but I managed to snag it with a loose strike when it tried to escape the page cloud.  A faint image of the black-clad librarian showed up when I did slash it.  This guaranteed that it was the portal home (or at least to our guest beds).  I continued to slash the book’s pages until I got to the picture; this I slammed extra fiercely in a somersault spin.  I heard a yelp of pain before I saw the pages reveal a familiar darkness.  I signaled for the others to follow me and took the portal back to the darkness.

Our opponent seemed nonchalant about our return.  “What’s the matter?” he chided.  “Hitting the books a little difficult for you?”

“Why don’t you try saying that to my face so I can smash yours in?” I growled in return.

“I think I’ll pass, which is more than you can say.”

This guy was really starting to get on my nerves.  Insulting my personality was one thing; I could live with that.  But insulting my intelligence?  That was something else entirely.  My temper flared, and I relayed this fact quite well through my furiously furrowed eyes and bared teeth.

“Do you notice anything missing, anything at all?”

Now that he mentioned it, there was something wrong, something gone.  Despite all of the rage boiling the blood in my veins, I didn’t feel any extra power.  My darkness wasn’t responding to my emotions!

“You haven’t finished your studies.  You don’t even know the classroom you study in.  Solve these problems, and only then can you defeat me.”

“Shut up with all of that school shit!” I shouted.  “I’m on vacation!”  In a blind rage I took one of the keys off of the key ring.  Without waiting for a spell, the key increased in size until it matched the size of Fatal Crest.

“Things are getting more interesting,” the assailant said to himself.  He drew Fenrir from his robes and awaited my next move.

I didn’t make him wait long.  I rushed him straight away, my swords held like the pincers of a scorpion.  My friends stood back and let me work; they knew how uncontrollable I got when my temper flared and how I liked to work.  I was thankful for their respect of my wishes, but I didn’t express it then, at least not in the common sense.  My thanks came in the form of increased savagery upon our captor in trying to get us free.

Despite the swiftness and power of my blows, the librarian deftly guarded against them using Fenrir.  I had to get that Keyblade away from him.  With a desperate gambit forming in my head, we continued to exchange blows.  I wish I could have seen his face so I could tell how much effort he was using to fend off and deal attacks.

“Whatever you’re planning, it won’t work.”

I was caught off guard by this statement and left my defense wide open as a result.  My opponent took advantage of my confusion and attacked.  I just managed to recompose and guard myself with both blades held in an X before he brought Fenrir down on my head.  How did he know that I was planning something?

“Distracting me with pitiable swordplay (I’m ashamed of Vexen for losing to it) while forming a plot in the back of your mind.  Your strategy to me is as plain as the swords in your hand.”

“Shut up, you lying asshole!”  I lashed out with a flurry of hard strikes, my focus as hard as Goofy’s skull.  He still managed to defend them.

That wasn’t the case for long.  While Fatal Crest was in a rest position, I flipped it so that its teeth faced my opponent.  I brought it up in a hard uppercut strike, catching his sword in its jaws.  The jaws clamped down on the blade as if bent by my will.  My enemy didn’t see that coming and slackened his grip slightly in surprise.  This momentary opportunity allowed me to pull Fenrir from his grip and fling it away along with Fatal Crest.  The jaws of the latter Keyblade relaxed and reset in mid-air.  The Keyblades landed in a perfect X formation right in front of my friends.

Being faced down without a weapon, my opponent retreated and reached for something in his robes.  He seemed increasingly frazzled as his pockets turned out empty.  I whistled for him with a smirk on my face.  He turned around but took a step back when he saw the object I held up.  It was his book, flipped open to the page with my sword on it!  “I believe you’re looking for this?”

The villain took another staggering step backwards.  “How did you disarm me of both my weapons?”

“Because I took advantage of distraction and realized the true nature of this place,” I coldly replied.  “Darkness all around us but not within; I couldn’t activate my dark aura because all of my darkness is around us.  You transported me to the realm of my mind, but you were pulling some of the strings to hide your voice and see my plans before they form.  I’m not as stupid as you make me out to be.”

“But how could you make a move I didn’t know about?”

“I formulated my plan in a part of my thoughts right behind my friends, your only blind spot.  As for the finishing touches of my plan, let’s just say there are even parts darkness and pirate in my blood.”  I held out the Keyblade in my hand, the one known as Follow the Wind.

I dropped the book in front of me, keeping it opened to the sword.  I plunged the blade into the pages of the book and gave it a twist.  The book flashed white before it fragmented and disintegrated completely, leaving my other sword behind.

“It seems that you have passed my test.  I hope to have the pleasure of meeting you again.”  He snapped his fingers, and darkness enveloped everything present.  The intruder disappeared into one of the portals the Organization was known for before he was taken by darkness.  That was the last thing I saw before my world went blank.