Twilight Town, First Visit:
In Which A Tower Is Explored
For a moment he couldn't breathe at all, stunned by the... wrongness of that sensation, the tangible force of the alien corridor almost taking his breath away. Then Roxas shook himself slightly, stirring, and he knocked Axel's arm off him, getting slowly to his feet. "That seems like a... risky method of travel," he said, studying the corridor.
It was not like a normal corridor. It was... surreal, twitching and fluttering at the edges as if alive, and it made Roxas feel deeply unsettled, right down in the pit of his stomach. He began to regret taking the 'discreet' route and not just suggesting Axel open a portal to Twilight Town.
From the look of him, Axel rather agreed. "Now we're supposed to go through that," he said, flatly.
"Yes!" Unfazed, Stiltzkin leapt up and scurried for the opening. "Don't worry, I've done this a lot. Just don't try it at home."
"But you're a crazy mutant," Axel pointed out, but he was already, if reluctantly, heading for the corridor behind him, glancing over his shoulder to ensure that Roxas would follow. "How do we know it'll also work for people?"
The bandana-clad moogle stepped into the roiling dark as if he had no idea how corrosive and dangerous it really was, and his tone was nothing but scornful. "You'll be fine! As long as you don't wander off the path. Then it might get a bit squishy in here."
Roxas lifted the collar of his jacket and put it over his mouth as he followed Axel into the tunnel, but almost immediately he was struck again by the oddity, his skin crawling with it. "I think it's very clever," he said, through his nausea.
Stiltzkin's tiny figure puffed up slightly, and he said graciously, "Why, thank you. Nothing like moogle ingenuity, as they say."
"I want to know what 'squishy' means," Axel said, ignoring that. He was pale, almost ghostly in the dimness.
Roxas was tempted to hiss at him I don't! but Stiltzkin was already clarifying, "Well, if you break the surface, the walls kind of melt down and fill in the tunnel. It's a bother to wash out of fur, but not really all that dangerous, you just got to keep slogging forward before it gets up over your mouth--"
He closed his eyes, fighting the image of the dark flooding in around them. Were moogles immune to the dark? For humans it worked like a mild acid, numbing whatever it touched and eventually breaking it down forever. And even aside from the threat of the darkness, this corridor felt so incredibly unnatural...
"Ah, look! There we are already, see?"
Roxas's eyes opened again quickly, and he and Axel both took quick, hurried steps to the exit, overtaking Stiltzkin and breaking out into the fresh, stable atmosphere of Twilight Town. Roxas hadn't even realized he was breathing hard until he was back on solid ground. It's over, oh thank the multiverse it's over.
"I don't know how anyone does that more than once," Axel said, a little ragged, "but I'm not. We can swim through space to the next world for all I care."
"Agreed," Roxas said faintly, and glanced up.
The landscape was unfamiliar, shockingly. He stood up straighter and looked around. It was a rather surreal place -- so brightly-colored as to almost hurt the eyes, with strange landmasses floating about randomly in the sunset sky, only a single length of train tracks extending into nothing to connect anywhere to anywhere else. It felt like Twilight Town, even the air tasted of it, but it certainly was nowhere that Roxas had even remote recollections of.
Stiltzkin hopped out of the corridor, perfectly unfazed, and took a quick look around. "Yep, seems to be the right place. The tower should be just over yonder, on the other side of this little isle." He did a few little stretches in restless anticipation.
Roxas glanced around once more at the scenery and then shook his head, dismissing it. It hadn't been in the simulation -- or it was on the other side of the world. Sometimes those things happened. The important thing was what was inside the tower.
It was strange-looking, for a tower: not exactly the most structurally-sound thing that Roxas had ever seen, but since having taken a good look at Merlin's house (umbrellas out of holes in the ceiling? where was the observatory visible on the outside? how could one door lead to a basement and to a kitchen and to a second story? and for that matter, where was the second story; by all logic, it should have run into the neighboring house) he really didn't have any complaints about it. He stepped up to the great double doors and pushed, lightly, just experimentally. It didn't budge.
Stiltzkin nodded to himself. "Locked, like I said. Roxas, do your thing! If you'd be so kind," he added hastily as Axel gave him a flat look.
It was what they were here for. Roxas opened one hand and called Oathkeeper with his mind. The white blade shimmered into his hand as naturally as if it had been there all along, invisible. He leveled it at the doors and held strong, body and will, as the tip of the keyblade began to glow, brighter and brighter.
With a metallic sound, the glow finally broke, scattering the light into a million pieces, and the doors groaned slowly open.
"Kupopo! We're in!" Stiltzkin crowed, hopping through the doors.
Axel and Roxas followed him in, more sedately. The redhead said dubiously, "What a dump. Whoever lives here might wanna fire their decorator."
Inside, the mysterious tower was in shambles. It was almost as if an army had been through here, destroying everything in its path. Even the walls and staircases showed signs of the conflict, and tapestries that might once have been grand were shredded.
"Are you sure there's any treasure left?" Roxas asked the moogle. "Seems like we might not be the first guys here."
Stiltzkin was observing the tapestry on hands and knees mournfully, but he got back up quickly on being addressed. "I can smell it," he declared. "Something valuable is here. I guess they must've been chased out and the doors were locked behind them!"
"Or else they locked the doors behind them so no one could follow them."
Stiltzkin ran a paw over his chin fretfully, glancing with wary eyes from Axel to Roxas and back again, clearly concerned that the possibility of finding enemies in the tower would scare them off.
He had no idea how determined Roxas was to know who the master of the tower's identity. "One way to find out," Roxas said, summoning Oblivion into his other hand and starting up the curving staircase.
"Just one second!" said Stiltzkin, dropping his pack onto the floor and rummaging through it. He surfaced a moment later with a brightly-colored hammer, like a noisy child's toy. On the head, it proudly proclaimed, 'Hammer DX: Pollendina Custom Edition'.
Axel murmured, so low it was for Roxas's ears only, "Oh man, it thinks it can fight, too. What if I laugh so hard I forget to watch out for enemies?"
"I'll try to make up for your incompetence," Roxas said, smirking a bit.
"Why, you little..."
Oblivious, Stiltzkin trotted up the stairs on Roxas's heels, saying, "No need to worry about me, fellas. I'm an expert at staying out of the way, and I can keep score when--!"
Roxas pushed open the door at the top of the stairs on a group of Soldier Heartless. The instant the door opened they all whipped around and stared with their eerie yellow eyes at the newcomers.
"Start now," Roxas told him.
Axel's chakrams were in his hands in an instant and gone again in the next, flung around the edges of the room to keep the Heartless from fanning out; Roxas darted into the mass and slammed one Soldier back into another, and then finished them both off with quick blows.
"Think these guys are responsible?" he asked, distracted.
"Little ones like these, all by themselves? Doubt it."
A wild blur of color caught both their attention in the same moment; Stiltzkin had his eyes closed and was flailing blindly with the mallet. He hit a Soldier, largely by accident, and it fell back for a beat, seeming confused. "How can you tell!" the moogle half-shouted.
"It helps if your eyes are open," Roxas suggested.
"The big guys are smarter," Axel said helpfully. "If you tie them to a stake with a heart ten feet away, they won't break themselves in two trying to get to it."
Stiltzkin looked up at them, startled, and Roxas reminded him, "These ones will. So watch your back." The moogle whirled to find a Soldier bearing down on him, and with a yelp he scurried behind Roxas.
If he'd had the breath, he would have sighed; instead, Roxas brought Oathkeeper down hard on the Soldier's helmet. "Do you think they're scavengers, or directed?" he asked Axel.
"Does it matter?" Axel shrugged and flung out a hand, engulfing two of the Heartless in flames and killing one. "Either way, there was something here first. Something nasty."
Roxas spared a glance for the door across the room. It seemed unmarred, undisturbed, with its bright, moving arrow pointing upwards. Would there be something waiting for them at the top of the tower, or...?
He was distracted by a squeaking sound, and turned quickly. Stiltzkin had walloped a Heartless with his hammer (which had squeaked) and darted out to smack the flailing Soldier that Axel had lit on fire, giving a triumphant cry as it burst into smoke. Roxas couldn't help admiring his ferocity in a bemused sort of fashion -- so this was how moogles had survived thoughout their evolutionary history? -- and apparently, Axel was doing the same, because he didn't react when a Soldier threw itself at his back.
Roxas only had time to suck in a breath for warning before Axel staggered, making a grunt of pain, and then it turned into a sharp, irritated, "Axel!" He swung Oblivion in a broad overhand sweep, sending the keyblade slamming through the creature and burying itself in the far wall.
Axel was already straightening again by the time Roxas drew up to him, with a slightly rueful grin. "That's what I get for not paying attention, right?"
"Well, I said I would make up for your incompetence," Roxas murmured, reaching for a Potion before he remembered -- ah, wait.
The Cure spell.
He lifted the point of Oathkeeper and murmured the word. Sora's memories of this spell were clear and strong, and so it didn't surprise him when a chime of bells filled the air, and a cascade of green wafted down around Axel's body. It even smelled refreshing, like a cool breeze.
Axel tensed, but he relaxed as the spell faded and nothing happened. "Huh," he said. "...Thanks."
While they spoke it was Stiltzkin who finished off the last Soldier, albeit in a dancing, skittish manner, one too many small glancing blows finally finishing off the Heartless he seemed very reluctant to go closer to. The moogle trotted over to him and puffed himself up in anticipation of praise.
"Nice hammer," Roxas said, obligingly.
"Thank you," Stiltzkin said, polishing his nails on the fur of his chest. "It's been passed down in my family for generations. Though I can't explain that noise it makes on impact..."
"Well, whatever, it's come in handy." Roxas didn't care less if Stiltzkin's weapons squeaked -- as long as he didn't have to have a squeaky weapon, and it worked for Stiltzkin, it was fine.
For all his bravery, the moogle waved them ahead of him towards the next door. "So, with all these monsters lurking hereabouts, seems likely we'll pick up some Twilight Shards," he said cheerfully.
Roxas frowned a bit, glancing at Axel. "Actually, these are pretty menial Heartless. If there were any Dusks here, they'd probably have taken care of them already."
Axel met his gaze and the corner of his lips turned up, but he said nothing. The moogle seemed much less amused, started, "Whaaaat about those shards, then? Don't even think about skipping out on the bill. I have friends, you know--"
"You'll get your shards," Axel said.
"I was only commenting," Roxas murmured.
They didn't do anything, didn't exchange any words; but at the top of the next staircase when Axel pushed open the door, there was a cluster of Dusks milling about in the middle of the room with smoke dissipating into the air around them. They looked up, uncertainly.
"Oh," Stiltzkin said, hushed. "These guys. They're not like the others."
Astute of him. Dusks weren't mindless, simple things of darkness and blind want. They were people.
They glanced from Axel to Roxas and back again, uncertain. They saw the keyblades still in Roxas's hands and looked at one another. Maybe they had some idea of what was coming, but none of them attempted to flee.
Roxas remembered Dusks. Quiet and hushed in his presence as if reverent of him, even moreso than they had been with the other numbered members of Organization XIII. Being a Nobody meant that you were judged by how well you had retained your humanity: the more you remembered, the stronger your willpower, and the more human-formed you looked. Roxas, with no memories at all, should by rights have been a Dusk himself, but -- impossibly -- he had been fully human-formed. The Dusks had treated him like he was something new and fascinating, and they had been shy to speak in his presence, and honored to serve by his side.
All the Nobodies had been like that, to some extent. Because he was different, strange.
Instead of struggling now, they looked their deaths in the face. They seemed to ask silently, Really? This is what you want? This is why you called us here?
He had never cared about Dusks one way or another before, but -- perhaps it was the heart; perhaps it was his experiences in the simulated Twilight Town, where they had been the only servants who had tried so hard to reach him -- he felt uneasy.
They were living, thinking beings. They had desires and opinions and even some remnants of personalities. Roxas knew that better than any other person with a heart, and so perhaps that was why he hesitated so long, even with Stiltzkin and Axel's gazes both resting on him, waiting.
I'm sorry, he thought.
He twirled the keyblades over the backs of his hands and then darted forward, sliding low to the ground at the last moment and dizzying the whole lot of them.
Don't think-- Don't think-- Don't think.
Oblivion tore into one sleek silvery creature, finding the shard that had crystallized inside its body and ripping it out. Roxas had put a quick, merciful end to the Dusk's existence before the dark gem had even clattered to the ground.
NEXT >>> Twilight Town, First Visit (Part 2)