Refrain of Darkness - Chapter 6

[eiahmon]

Title: Castlevania: Refrain of Darkness

Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Not mine, don't own.
Summary: Aqua receives a mission to investigate a new world that's appeared on the council's radar due to a Heartless invasion, and finds that everything is different here. Now she must team up with Juste Belmont and track down the source of the Heartless in a world where souls have all the power and hearts don't belong.

6.

Juste felt himself come awake, but he extended his senses before opening his eyes or moving. He knew immediately that he was in a sanctuary inside Castlevania, and he felt Aqua's presence nearby. He could hear her slow, even breathing and realized that she was asleep. Satisfied that they were in a safe place, he opened his eyes, sat up, and stretched. His magic levels were normal, and the symptoms of exhaustion had faded away while he had been asleep. He put his breastplate back on, stood up, put his coat back on, and then walked over to Aqua.

"Miss Aqua?" he called softly as he lightly touched her shoulder. "Miss Aqua?"

She growled and attempted to escape waking up by rolling onto her stomach away from the annoyance. She was not a morning person.

Juste smiled faintly; he had been that way as a boy, but he had outgrown it. He tried calling her again, but she only grumbled something and didn't move again. Fine, well then, he would try his grandfather's tried and true method of getting reluctant risers up and moving. He moved a few steps away, sat down, pulled a meal pack out of his coat, and unwrapped it. He then used a little magic to heat it just enough to send the delightful scent of the meat and vegetables spiraling up from it. He then used a little wind magic to gently blow the scent over to her.

As the aroma of hot, delicious food registered in her sleepy mind, she rolled back over and blinked her eyes open and sought out the source of the food. She found Juste just a couple paces from her, and she glared when she saw him smirk slightly in triumph. She sat up and stretched, unwillingly perhaps, but she was up and they had things to do.

His smirk widened at her glare, but he pulled out another meal pack, released the spells on it, and tossed it to her, followed by a bottle of water. He then pulled a second bottle out of his pocket and began to eat.

"At least the Elite don't reappear after defeat." he said between bites.

"No kidding. I would honestly debate turning right around and walking out of here if we had to face that again," she replied, starting in on her food. "I can be a bear to wake up, I'm surprised you didn't just dump water on me," she commented a few moments later.

Juste just barely managed to swallow the bite he had just taken before he started laughing. "That was Grandfather's preferred method when I was younger, but he quit doing that when he found out that startling someone with high magic levels was not the smartest thing to do. When I was about 13, he woke me up that way, and I lashed out as I woke up, thinking I was being attacked. I buried him in ice and snow and had to hastily dig him out before he froze. He was unhurt, but he never did that again, and it was just as much as a lesson for me as it was for him. Never startle a magic user." He smiled fondly at the memory for a moment, and then he took another bite.

Aqua burst out laughing as well as he told his story. "I do believe I threw Ven against the wall once not long after he first arrived at our home when he came bounding into my room one morning and jumped on my bed to wake me. I was torn between panicking over possibly hurting him and the smug feeling of vindication."

"Younger sibling? Or something along those lines? My sister never did that with me, because she has a great deal of magic herself and knows that doing so would be a bad idea. Our cousins on the other hand..." Juste trailed off and grinned.

She smiled and responded, "Mm, something like that. Ven is something of an adopted little brother to Terra and me. While Terra and I grew up together since we were young, Ven didn't come until we were around 16. He's a couple years younger and way more excitable than the both of us put together. We may not have known him for as long as each other, but Terra and I both adore him anyway. He's important to us, and we're important to him. We're family."

"Sometimes the closest family is the family you chose." Juste said, thinking of Lydie. He then crumbled up the paper his meal had been wrapped in and incinerated it with a quick burst of magic.

"That's always been true for us. None of us really have any memories of our blood relatives anyway, Ven even less so." She stretched her arms in front of her just after burning her own wrapper and immediately froze. "My sleeve! It's completely ruined!" she moaned, pulling at it and investigating the damage the acid had done the day before. She had been a bit occupied before, trying to stop her arm from dissolving, so she only now really noticed it.

Juste reared his head back in surprise. "Yes, and my trouser leg is ruined." he said, rotating his leg to show the gaping hole. "At least it wasn't your arm."

"You don't understand, my clothes are resistant to all kinds of elemental damage. They barely burn, they never tear, they are very hard to stain. And yet that acid burned right through them like it was nothing!" she explained angrily. "Replacing this is going to cost me a ton, it was custom designed for me."

"I understand that part, but again, at least it wasn't your arm. I'd never seen Legion do that before, so we were very lucky in there. Legion is a rare Elite, Hector is the only person other than me to have faced it, and that was back in 1479 during Dracula's first resurrection, and Hector had never reported the beams that it fired. He said it only threw corpses at him until he destroyed the shell."

"So it's safe to assume it adapts every time it resurrects," she concluded in a grumpy tone. "I don't think I've ever actually been burned by acid before. None of the Heartless I've fought use it, and the only time I've ever encountered it was when Ven and I went to Halloween Town and he knocked over a bottle of hydrofluoric acid in the doctor's nightmarish lab. He accidentally touched it and it started eating away at his skin. That's why I hoped the treatment I used then would work here. Thankfully it did."

"We wouldn't have needed it though if our magic hadn't done the unexpected." He smiled. "I hadn't been expecting our magic to combine so... explosively."

Aqua snorted in an unladylike manner. "That's almost an understatement. I have no idea what happened; one moment things were going fine, the next everything went to hell," she said flatly.

"Well, we -had- talked about trying a dual crush; I just hadn't been intending for it to happen that way. Though, we now know we can do that, which will certainly come in handy later."

"Does it always produce the same effect? Honestly, I've never seen that sort of magic before. A giant explosion like that, and -ice- meteors? Certainly not the sort of things I've ever seen in my experience, which is pretty broad at this point with all the different worlds I've been to. Then again, as I've mentioned before, so much in this world is new to me."

"Most Belmonts go solo against Castlevania and the monsters inside it, so dual crushes are rare inside the castle, but outside of it, either during training missions or when we're taking care of lesser vampires and demons, we use them whenever we can, since they do so much damage for relatively little magic cost. The effects seem to vary depending on the spells used, and who initiated it to begin with."

"And no doubt I'm an unknown variable with my brand of magic being so different from everything else here," she commented. "So who knows whether the results would be the same each time even if we did use the same spells?"

Juste shrugged as he walked toward the door of the sanctuary. "It is possible that we could get a different effect than before, though our magics being so different could explain the explosive reaction of the first crush. The good news is that, even when we get unexpected results, it's always possible to figure out why, so you can cast it reliably in the future."

"Hm, all right," she responded contemplatively as she followed him.

"It's really not something to practice here," he continued as he walked back out into the corridor and continued back towards Legion's room, "because conserving magic in this place can save your life if you get cornered, but in this instance I think we should try to do so anyway, so we at least know something of what we're capable of. Something or someone other than Dracula resurrected the castle early, so it never hurts to be prepared."

"True, and better that we have an idea of what will happen when our magic combines rather than relying on it later and it fails in some way." They returned to the large room that was no longer covered in ice, and Aqua glanced around. "So are we looking for something specific here?"

Juste swept his eyes around the room, and he spotted something glittering in the center of the floor. "The Elite on occasion drop things," he explained as he walked to it and picked it up. "And it looks like Legion was kind enough to leave us something for all of our trouble." He realized right away what it was; Leon and Hector had both left notes and drawings describing the dragon crest that could be used to open doors.

He showed it to Aqua when she stepped closer to look. "This appears to be the bottom right corner of the key we need to open the sealed door that leads to the courtyard. I have a feeling that every Elite we encounter from here on will drop a piece."

"So you're saying we'll have to face at least three other elite creatures before we get to the 'boss', so to speak?" she asked, annoyance coloring her tone. She really wished they could just get to the bottom of things quickly. Shame it never seemed to be that easy.

Juste gave her a sideways look. "Oh no, more than that. This piece here is tiny, so we're likely looking at five more, one for each area of the castle, not counting the entrance and Dracula's throne room."

She stared at the crest for a moment before sighing. "I'm really starting to hate this place."

"You're not the only one, Miss Aqua, and it will make it all the more satisfying when it crumbles to the ground once again. Now let's go; we have a lot more ground to cover." He stuffed the crest piece in one of his pockets and turned to the door opposite to the one they had come in. He heard her grumbling to herself as they walked through the door, into another short featureless hallway, and once he reached the door at the other end, he paused and wrinkled his nose in disgust.

"Oh dear," she said, catching the look on his face. "And what have we here?"

"Do you smell that?" he asked as he turned his head to look at her. "That chemical smell, mixed in with the scent of decaying bodies?"

Immediately after his response, she caught the scent he was talking about, and it made her cough as the residual chemicals singed the back of her throat. "Ugh, tell me that's not a lab up ahead. I can't imagine what this place would change a lab into."

"I know we've touched upon alchemy a bit the other day when I was telling you about the Crimson Stone, but how much do you know about it, Miss Aqua?"

"I know a bit, but more in the vague sort of sense. It's not something I've ever attempted myself. The whole change-lead-into-gold thing has never really interested me. I don't need to change something into something else; the base nature of things is plenty for me to work with."

"Mathias Cronqvist was an alchemist in life, as his creation of the Crimson Stone shows, despite many considering it to be blasphemous. The ultimate goal of alchemy is the creation of the Philosopher's Stone, which would give its user eternal life and allow them to turn normal metals to gold. It was during an attempt to create the Philosopher's stone that the Ebony Stone once possessed by Walter Bernhard was also created. Despite becoming a vampire, Dracula has continued his pursuit of alchemy, though no one is quite sure why. Some say he is hoping to bring his wives back from the dead somehow, while others insist that he's doing to it insult God. Personally, I believe it's simply the machinations of a man who has long ago lost his mind.

"Judging by the smell, I would say his alchemy lab is on the other side of the door. The good news is that the monsters roaming free through the area are pretty standard and rarely change from castle to castle. Just keep an eye out for things that seem out of place; who knows what's being created in here."

She stated sardonically, "I'm not sure I'm the best judge of what's out of place, since I myself am an anomaly to this world. You know it best, you're more likely to know what is unusual here."

Juste pushed open the door and peeked his head in. A dim red light fell across his face, and he looked across the room in front of them, with its grimy tile floor and walls. Tables with bottles, tubes, vials and other instruments of so called science littered the room, and large glass jars filled with strange creatures that he really didn't want to know about lined the walls. There were no monsters though, so he cautiously stepped inside and waited until Aqua joined him.

"You know, I really should've thought of this earlier, but you all really call this place 'Castlevania'? Is there not a better name for it? It just seems kind of, I don't know, lame, for lack of a better word," Aqua criticized mildly as she trailed slightly behind Juste.

Juste shook his head slightly. "It was my great-great-great-great grandfather, Christopher that named it Castlevania, and no one, not even his son Soleiyu, knew where he got the name from. No one had a better name, so it stuck."

"Soleiyu? Now that's a unique name." she replied.

"Christopher didn't know French as well as he thought he did. I'm glad my parents knew it better, or who knows what my name could have ended up like."

"Oh, was he aiming for Soleil? I see. What does your name mean in French?" Languages were yet another thing that Aqua was most interested in, despite not really needing to learn them due to the traveler's effects.

He smiled at her as he walked over to the doorway to the next room. "It means 'righteousness'. My parents wanted to give me a name with meaning apparently."

"Ah, I see," she said with a smile of her own. She wrinkled her nose as they opened the next door. "I will never get accustomed to the smell of laboratories. Especially when they're mixed with the extraneous scent of death."

"Encountered them before then?" Juste asked as he spotted their first monster – a green ax armor. "See that thing there?" he said as he nodded at it. "They fling their axes at you once you get close enough. The axes spin as they come towards you and then they reverse direction and return to the one that threw them. They can throw them along the floor or about head level, but the axes always travel in a straight line. They can also fling them overhand in an arc, and they also will brandish an ax like a sword and charge at you."

"Yeah, they have one in one of the major worlds I spend time in, Radiant Garden." She tilted her head at Juste's explanation of this new enemy. "In other words, block the axes or move to the side as long as you don't move back into the same spot or it'll hit you on its return. I don't really see what's unusual about that," she responded, unsure why the lesson was needed.

"You say that now, but wait until you're dodging multiple axes at once. They throw them quite frequently, so it's best to take them down from afar if you can." He walked forward, calling up his magic as he went, and then he saw that the lone ax armor wasn't lone after all. "Did I mention," he added as he eyed the four that were lined up in the corridor, "that they have the tendency to spawn in groups?"

She surveyed the enemies before them. "Well it's a good thing magic is my specialty, isn't it?" Aqua summoned Stormfall and fired off several low-level fire spells, seeing how the enemies' health held up as Juste really hadn't said anything about how tough they were, just how they attacked.

He smirked as her magic landed on the ax armors. "Indeed." He summoned Magic Missile and sent it toward the one in the front of the row. The ax armor collapsed to the ground in pieces, but the spell still had more power, so it went on to attack the second one.

Aqua followed up her fire with a few well-aimed Blizzard spells, which went through multiple targets regardless whether the first enemy was destroyed or not. This inevitably made her the ax armors focus on her as their main threat, but she was unworried. As they started towards her to get in range to hit her with their ax throws, she threw up a barrier that the axes simply bounced off of, then jumped back out of range, casting Thundaga as she did so. The armors were momentarily stunned as the electricity was conducted through the metal, and the remaining enemies collapsed as the spell ended.

"You can come visit this castle with me any time you want, Miss Aqua." Juste said with a grin as they walked into the next room, but that grin quickly vanished from his face when he saw what was shambling across the floor. "Red Skeletons," he grumbled. "Why does it always have to be Red Skeletons?"

Rather than waiting for an explanation, Aqua chose to simply attack the new enemy and find out for herself what Juste disliked about these so much. She sent a heavy ice block at the nearest one. The sheer force of the blow caused the creature's bones to dissemble into a scattered pile on the floor. But right before her eyes, she saw the bones pull together and it reassembled itself on its own. "What? Wha-how does it do that?"

"No one quite knows. Not even the Vampire Killer can destroy them permanently. Only Hector was able to destroy them for good, and even he required a specific Innocent Devil that had learned a purification spell."

"Purification? So shouldn't light or holy spells work as easily?" she asked, eyeing the shambling enemies as they came slowly closer. She decided that questions about what the innocent devil thing was could wait till their situation was resolved.

"Not even my holy spells work against them. They knock them down easily enough, but they can't keep them down. They are the only enemy that the Vampire Killer cannot destroy, so perhaps they are using a portion of Dracula's power to reanimate themselves?"

Aqua hummed thoughtfully, an idea forming. She dashed at the approaching enemy, and foregoing any spell, she simply slammed her blade into it. Her weapon glowed very slightly as it connected with the skeleton, and the creature fell apart, the bones scattering once again. But this time, it didn't reform. "I thought so!" she exclaimed as she leapt back from the other oncoming enemies. At Juste's shocked expression, she quickly explained, "My keyblade releases the hearts from Heartless, completely destroying them when other weapons can only disperse them temporarily. I thought it might be the same here. It looks like it works about the same way, so I was right. Hm, I wonder..." she cocked her head briefly before jumping into the middle of several skeletons. If it didn't work, at least it would knock them back, so she wouldn't be hurt by her experiment. She called out, "Faith!" and a pillar of light shot up around her, blasting back all enemies within a certain radial distance. The skeletons crumbled immediately, and did not reassemble.

Juste felt his jaw hanging open, and he heard his mental voice (which sounded a great deal like his mother) admonish him about catching flies, but he quickly shook his head. "You need to tell me where you live." he said, and she turned to look at him on puzzlement. "So if we encounter these again, we can invite you to come along and destroy them for us. We've been thinking for years that we would either have to find another Devil Forgemaster like Hector that was willing to work against Dracula, or find a man of the cloth with combat experience. No one since Dracula's 1479 resurrection has been able to destroy those." He gave her a slow clap. "Very nice, Miss Aqua. Very nice indeed."

She was stunned that something that came so easily for her was so difficult for anyone else here. She gave an embarrassed laugh. "Maybe I could teach you the spell, if your magic will accept it. That would give you a weapon of your own to use against them."

His face lit up. "I would like that very much. It would certainly be easier than trying to track down another Devil Forgemaster."

"Faith is a light spell I learned from Queen Minnie not too long ago. It's not -that- powerful, but it has its uses. So what's a Devil Forgemaster?" she questioned, quickly switching subjects to something she didn't know yet.

He explained as they continued on across the room and down a staircase lit with torches every ten steps or so. "Devil Forgemasters are very rare – only a handful have been known to exist in all of recorded history. It's a branch of Necromancy, and it cannot be learned; once must be born with the talent. A Devil Forgemaster can create creatures called Innocent Devils and use those Devils in combat to fight for them. There are many different types; they are limited only by the imagination of their creator. Only the Forgemasters themselves know the exact process, but the short of it is that the Forgemaster creates a sculpture of the Devil he wishes to create, and then he calls on the powers of Darkness to release to him a soul that has been damned. That soul is then called into this world by the Forgemaster and placed into the sculpture. The addition of the soul, plus a surge of the Forgemaster's own magic brings it to life." Juste paused as they reached the bottom on the stairs, and he summoned a wall of water to destroy the skeletons that cluttered the hallway in front of them. "Hector, the one who defeated Dracula in 1479, was one of only two Devil Forgemasters known in the past 1000 years. He used to work for Dracula, in fact from the hints he dropped to Trevor, Dracula practically raised him. After Dracula began his war on humanity after the murder of his second wife, Hector couldn't bear all of the killing, so he defected."

"I see...If these Forgemasters are so rare, how does anyone really know anything about them? And as for their creations, why are they called 'Innocent' Devils if they bear a damned soul? I should think 'damned' would make the adjective an oxymoron. Are their past sins forgiven if they carry out what they were created to do?" Aqua questioned, picking out the main things from his explanation that caught her attention for the moment.

They walked into the next room, and Juste made note of the large amount of equipment and tables covered with various tools that scattered about the large, square space. The place was clear of monsters though, so he went to answer Aqua's question.
"Devil Forgemasters have been appearing in history for -"
Ahead and to his right came the sound of wood against stone, and Sara crackled in warning just as he saw movement out of the corner of his eye.

"Look out!" he shouted as he leapt back and threw his arm out to stop Aqua just as a heavy wooden table somehow flung itself across the room at them. He felt the breeze it generated as it passed mere inches in front of him as Aqua yelped in surprise, and it crashed to the floor opposite of where it had been.

"A poltergeist!" he gasped as he uncoiled the whip, and... Was the table somehow getting back up? It shouldn't... How...? What was going on here!

Aqua caught a glimpse of black and a yellow face appear briefly on the table as it bent its legs to launch at them again. "Not a poltergeist. Heartless!" She and Juste leapt out of the way again as a chair shook itself into motion a little further away. "Possessors, little black orb-like creatures that can enter anything and control it. You have to knock them out of the object they're in to do any real damage to them."

Every object in the room began to shake and move as Juste stared in horrified fascination at it all. "How do we do that?"

"Usually I just hit them with my keyblade a few times, that usually works. I'm not sure with you." Several scalpels then flew through the air, aiming straight for them. Aqua threw up her shield with Juste behind her and they all pinged against it before falling to the floor as if dazed.

"Let's see how effective magic is then." Juste jumped back a couple more feet and castle Holy Lightning. The magic crackled over the stunned blades, as well as the now damaged table that was still trying to right itself .The table collapsed, and a black orb with yellow eyes and a red squiggle for a mouth rose up out of it.

"Oh good," Aqua remarked, and then sent her own Thunder spell arcing across the scalpels, releasing a single Possessor that had claimed the lot of them. She then smacked it with her keyblade, two hard strikes, and the Possessor died in a swirl of shadow. A chair tumbled through the air towards them, and Aqua swung her blade into it to knock it off course and send it careening into the wall. The force expelled a third Heartless into the air.

A quick swing of the Vampire Killer destroyed the Possessor that had risen from the table, just as a stand burner of some kind came flying through the air at him, firing a bright, blue flame at him as it closed in. He stepped aside and cast Hail Crystal. Chunks of ice appeared and encased the burner, snuffing its flame and making it drop to the floor. Another crack of the whip prompted the Heartless to appear, and yet another swing quickly ended it.
"These things do not appear to have much health." he commented.

"No, they're very weak on their own, that's why they have to possess objects to protect them and deal damage. If you were to get hit by one of them as they are, it wouldn't even be as strong as a punch." Aqua allowed the one she released from the chair to hit her, and she barely swayed from its force. "See? Not at all effective on their own." She quickly dispersed the Heartless, then ducked as a candelabrum swooped by. It stopped after it had passed and used its flames to shoot fire at her, which she blocked with her shield, and the flares reflected back at it, sending it tumbling through the air.

A wooden cabinet with a myriad small drawers shuddered and shook, and all of those drawers opened at once and began spewing paper at them. Despite the still air, the paper flew about the space as though it had wings, greatly obstructing their view of things around them. He stepped away from Aqua not daring to cast fire magic so close to her with so much paper in the air, and cast Firestorm. The fire whirl appeared in the center of the room, incinerating the paper that got too close to it, but the spell was interrupted when the drawers that the paper had come from began to launch themselves across the room at him, one by one. The thin wood shattered against the wall behind him, and he tried to edge closer to the cabinet.

Aqua decided the visibility problem was annoying, so she cast a large Gravity over the room, clearing the rest of the paper from the air (as well as a few medical instruments that had just entered the fight). Now that they could see with the majority of flying objects temporarily stuck to the floor, she assessed the remaining Possessors while Juste took down the cabinet.

Several small objects: a writing quill, another scalpel, a saw, glass tubes, and a few other things the he wasn't able to identify flew off the top of the cabinet at him, forcing him to dodge and duck as he closed the distance. Behind him he heard Aqua spellcasting, followed by the sound of multiple things slapping against the floor, and he smiled at the sound as he finally got in range of the cabinet. A Flame Trap spell caused a whirling pinwheel of flame to appear in front of him, and it spun across the floor towards his target. It touched the old wood and quickly grew in size until he could no longer see the cabinet at all. The Possessor then appeared briefly above it, before the spell quickly devoured it too.

Aqua managed to identify Possessors in the medical tools, a mortar and pestle set, and another chair before her spell wore off. With the cabinet Possessor gone, the paper remained on the floor, making a dangerously slippery footing. She eliminated that problem by setting fire to it, hopping over the ring of flame as it quickly ate up the stock across the stone floor. Then the medical tools flew at her, and she cast Aero around herself to prevent them from reaching her. She then batted them aside with her blade, expelling the Heartless, which she quickly destroyed. Then she took on the pestle as it attempted to bludgeon her (rather ineffectively, it had to be said), blasting it aside. The ceramic set crashed into a counter set into the wall, shattering. The Possessor was forced to emerge, but before she could catch it, it flew across the room and inhabited a large tube along the wall.

The loud cracking of glass was the only warning he received. Juste turned towards the sound just in time for the glass front of a ceiling high tube to fracture, allowing a spray of liquid to erupt in his direction. The high pressure jet hit him square in the chest, flinging him back a few feet and knocking him to the floor. The double impact punched the air out of his lungs, and he gasped as he scuttled away from the foul smelling fluid as it continued to gush out.

Thank the stars, Aqua was not the only one to deal with this crap. She leapt to the rescue, however, freezing the spew with a spell. She could see the Possessor shift to devote its energy to resuming the flow, but it was having quite the difficult time of it, given that whatever that stuff was, it had a lower freezing temperature than water, meaning the fluid was frozen more solid than even Aqua's own basic ice spell. She took the opportunity to beat on the tube until the Possessor was forced to leave it when she cracked the glass in another location. She quickly dispersed it with Fire.

Juste staggered to his feet, sucking in great lungfuls of air as streams of whatever liquid that had been ran down from his clothes. Oh Lord, the smell. Perhaps he could bathe in the next sanctuary they found...

Before he could complete that thought, something hit the back of his knees, making his legs fold in under him. He fell, but instead of hitting the floor, he found himself landing in a chair, a chair that was scuttling at a great rate of speed across the room. He heard Aqua chuckle somewhere behind him just before the chair stopped abruptly, which launched him out of it. He managed to land on his feet though, and he spun around a put a bit too much power into a Salamander spell. The intense heat destroyed the chair almost instantly, and a single whip swing destroyed the Possessor as soon as it emerged.

"I would say that was a bit of an overreaction, but then again, you've pretty much earned it after that," Aqua remarked, nodding at his painfully wet and smelly clothes. "Should we douse you in regular water and I can dry you off? Who knows how far the next place we could wash off is from here."

"Yes," Juste grumbled as he shivered, "that would be greatly appreciated."

She nodded sympathetically and conjured a large ice block over his head, which she then promptly melted, drenching him with cold, but clean, water.

He knew it was coming, but he still couldn't contain the yelp at the cold water as it poured down over him. He shivered again and nodded at Aqua to proceed to the next step. The warmth of her magic wrapped around him then, drying him as best as it could. He could still feel the slimy gunk in his clothing and hair, but it would do until they found a sanctuary.

"Sorry," she grimaced. "Takes a lot more energy to heat the ice. But it's better now, right? I'm sure you can wash up properly later."

"It's better than before, so thank you. I'll manage until we find a sanctuary." he said as he tried to ignore the feeling of his hair sticking to itself and him. "For now, I just want to get out of this room."

"No kidding." She dismissed her keyblade and made for the door to move on to the next hall. "So...you were saying? About the Forgemasters and Devils?"

Now it was his turn to grimace as his boots made a squelching sound with every step he took. "Oh yes, where was I?"

She reminded him of what her questions were, and he launched into a detailed explanation.

"Devil Forgemasters have been appearing in history for thousands of years, and while the power itself is inherently dark, the Forgemasters themselves are not. They must choose to walk the evil path. Some previous ones wrote what they knew down, and the rest we know because Hector befriended Trevor after Dracula's 1479 defeat. Trevor had been seriously injured by Isaac, the second Devil Forgemaster, so he had little to do but talk during his recovery, so he asked as much as he could in case we ever encountered them again.

"The reason they are called 'Innocent Devils" is because in some ways they are. They live only for their master, and will do whatever he tells them, for good or for ill. Hector likened them to young children. A child will steal when told to by a parent, the whole time being unaware that what they're doing is wrong.

"As for your last question, no one knows; not even the Forgemasters themselves. Hector said as long as they weren't killed in battle without being resurrected, then his Innocent Devils would live as long as he did. What happens to them once they pass on?" Juste shrugged. "As I said, no one knows."

"Hm," Aqua hummed thoughtfully. "Perhaps they're a little like the Dream Eaters Sora and Riku interacted with. There were Spirits, which were helpful to the light, and Nightmares, which would attack the light. The Dream Eaters could be created by the dreamers, and so I imagine if someone with a dark alignment had done the same, they would be Nightmares instead of Spirits. So I think they may be similar to the Innocent Devils in that it's their creator that determines what they are and what they do. And we don't really know what happens to them when they are destroyed either, not to mention what they truly are to begin with. They're the substance of dreams, after all. Who really knows what they're made of?"

Juste cracked the Vampire Killer against a Spittle Bone that was moving across the ceiling over their head. "Watch for those. They're just skeletonized birds, but they can breathe fire as well as any dragon you may have heard of." He frowned thoughtfully at her explanation of Nightmares and Spirits. "Those do indeed sound like Innocent Devils. Trevor wrote that Hector could create them out of a mere wisp of conjured matter, but that was tiring, so he preferred not to do it." He turned his head to the left to look at her as they descended another set of steps. "He also said that Hector was capable of doing joint attacks with his Devils and that they could learn new skills over time. Can the Spirits do that?"

"Joint attacks, definitely, with their owners and each other at times. I'm not certain about new skills, but I do know that they get stronger as their creators do. I don't know quite as much about them as I would like; I've never been approved for a Dream Dive, so I can't find out for myself. Everything I know is secondhand, and while Riku is the more reliable witness of the two, he still doesn't have quite enough patience to handle all my questions," she commented wryly. Few people had that much patience.

Another skeletal bird swooped down at them, but Aqua fired a Blizzard spell at it before it has the chance to burn anything.

"Approved for a Dream Dive? Why do you have to be approved?" They reached the bottom of the steps, which opened up into a long corridor. There were none of the tubes and other equipment that littered the rest of the lab, but there was a sanctuary in the middle of the left wall. Far head at the end of the corridor was a set of double doors that no doubt had an Elite behind it.

"Well, we had some difficulties with the last Dream Drop that was done with Riku and Sora. They were marked and attacked by enemies who took advantage of their dreaming to eventually put Sora into so deep a dream that he could never awaken, and they would use him for their own nefarious purposes. Riku prevented that from happening in the end, but it still showed us a large weak spot in the Dreaming. As a Keyblade Master, I have a fair bit of authority, but even I can't overrule Master Yen Sid and King Mickey's decision to disallow any Dives, even though as far as we're aware, our enemies have been permanently dealt with. It's a safety precaution, I suppose, but I'd still like to visit the Sleeping Worlds." Aqua directed her attention toward the door ahead. "I imagine that leads to another tough battle?"

"Likely – the Elite are always close to sanctuaries. I think we can agree that we could use a rest after that mess back there." He waved his hand in the direction they had come from.

"Probably a good idea," she concurred. "We don't need to stay too long, in any case. We'll probably need it more after the battle. I do hope this one goes easier than the last," she added sardonically.

"I suppose it would depend on what's in here." Juste said as he pushed through the sanctuary door. "The last time I was in this castle, the Elite was a large blob born from a cauldron in the middle of the floor. It liked to hang off the ceiling and try to crush me by falling on my head." He touched the statue and felt his magic refill. "I sincerely hope we don't encounter one of those again."

"I can see how physical attacks would be useless, but wouldn't magic be effective? And I would think a large creature falling from above would be easy enough to dodge as it shouldn't be able to change direction as it drops," Aqua pointed out logically. She also touched the statue and felt any fatigue fade.

"I got through the battle without taking any damage from it, but it was a large creature in a small room, and it moved surprisingly quick. I couldn't use any magic, because while I was spellcasting, it would close in on me, giving me no room to maneuver once the spell was over." He turned and looked at her. "I need to bathe and wash my clothing as best as I can, but I should probably wait until after we've dealt with the upcoming Elite. Since it's the battle for the lab area, it will likely be nasty. Are you ready?"

She nodded and they departed the sanctuary and crossed through to the entrance to the next room. They beheld a most strange sight as they entered; at first, Aqua wondered what this boss was supposed to be. But as she and Juste cautiously continued their approach, she began to make out what exactly they were to face.

"Wonderful," Juste muttered to himself as he laid eyes on what was waiting for them.

Two large tanks stood in front of them, with each containing a person, or rather, what passed for a person. The tank on the right held a male figure, dressed in coat very much like his own, though the red was much darker, reminding him of old, dead blood. The long white hair was ratted and tangled, and the face was pinched in an angry expression. The body was withered and emaciated, but he had no doubt that such poor physical condition wouldn't slow it at all. Hanging from its belt, within easy reach of the left hand, was a mockery of the Vampire Killer. Sara crackled in anger as they stepped into the room, and he paused as Aqua gasped.

The tank on the left contained a young woman that could nearly pass for Aqua's twin, if not for a few great differences. Her clothes were lighter shades than Aqua's, and the layered hair that Aqua favored was choppier, slightly shorter, and a deeper blue than hers. She wore a scowl that Aqua could honestly claim had crossed own face less than five times in her life. This body, too, was in poor physical condition, but what truly caught Aqua's attention was the keyblade held loosely in the doppelganger's hand. It was a dark version of her own Stormfall. The edges were sharper and hooked, while the blue and steel gray had been darkened to midnight blue and black.

"Doppelgangers," Juste said as the creatures' eyes opened and fixed upon then. "Copies made of us using a mix of alchemy and magic. Leon encountered two of him inside Walter's castle. They will use the same attacks that we do, and they will move very fast." His own doppelganger sneered at him and pushed forward against the glass of the tank. "Any attack works, but they will know how to counter you, so beware of that." The white haired creature hit the tank, which caused it to crack. "Get ready; here they come!"

The copy of him slammed into the glass with its entire weight, and the front of the tank shattered under the force of the blow. Glass shards and the same foul smelling liquid that Juste had been sprayed with earlier poured out onto the floor, and his copy leapt out at him. He dodged to the right, and he was aware of the sound of the second tank shattering as it sneered at him again. Its mouth was lined with razor sharp teeth, teeth that no human possessed.

Juste unhooked the Vampire Killer from his belt and sent it whipping towards his target, but the copy dodged out of the way and uncoiled its own weapon. Juste backflipped to get away as the mockery cracked the floor where he had been standing, sending chips of the tile flying up into the air.

Aqua's double used the sharp edges of its keyblade to carve a large X in the glass, which it then kicked the center of hard enough that the weakened glass exploded outward. Aqua quickly pulled up a shield to deflect the shards. The doppelganger slipped through the opening, not noticing when its shoulder caught on one of the broken edges, and the resulting cut soon filled with a liquid too thick to be true blood, though it was as red as any human's.

The double's eyes caught Aqua's own, and she shivered unconsciously; the strange golden shade was too similar to those of her past foes.

The copy growled suddenly, its scowl morphing into a feral grin as it leapt at Aqua, its keyblade suddenly flaming as it slashed at her. It was faster than she'd anticipated, and it caught her off-guard. She barely had enough time to jump back out of range. The copy easily compensated, as it immediately fired a block of ice at her. Aqua sidestepped quickly and realized that if magic was her most powerful attribute, she could not easily face her "evil twin" in an extended magic battle. She slide-dashed in close, whipping her keyblade around to slice at the copy's side.

Her swing was met by her double's own dark blade, and as they both had equal strength, they both leapt away in tandem as there was no possibility of their battle progressing otherwise. Aqua slid back in close to the ground as she ducked beneath the blade directed towards her head. She slashed at the copy's legs. It tried to jump as it realized what her aim was at the last moment, but it was a fraction of a second too late, and Aqua's keyblade sliced through its clothes by its ankle, cutting deep. The double leapt away once again, resting most of its weight on the unharmed leg. Aqua's face took on a slightly triumphant expression, as it put her at an advantage. It also proved that her copy's clothing were just an imitation and didn't carry the level of protection that hers did.

Juste swung his whip as his copy streaked forward at him, and he was rewarded with an inhuman shriek as the Vampire Killer made contact. Instead of going up in flames like he had hoped, the wound on the creature's shoulder merely smoked as a thick red ichor oozed from it. Still the attack did not slow it down, and Juste rolled to his right again, just it flung a glass bottle to the floor. Dark flames erupted and raced across the tiles towards him in a corrupted version of his holy water attacks. He backed up as the flames chased after him, and when they finally died down, the copy was already running at him again. He pulled his cross off of its chain around his neck and flung it. The creature snarled as the holy item made contact, but it only staggered for a second. That second though was all he needed as he lashed out with the Vampire Killer again, and this time, he caught it on the chest. It screeched and stumbled back, but as he moved in for the kill, it attacked with its own whip, and Juste yelped as the dark whip laid open his left upper arm. The wound burned from the cold, and he jumped backwards to get some breathing room as the cold raced down his arm to his fingers.

Juste's yelp distracted Aqua for a split second, and when she quickly redirected her attention, she found a fireball coursing straight for her. She hurriedly threw up a shield, but not quite fast enough to block the attack. She managed to turn aside and throw up a hand to protect her face at the last second to avoid taking the blow head on, but she screamed as the dark fire seared her arm. Thankfully, her clothes protected her from the worst of it, but this was the same arm whose sleeve had been damaged earlier, and the fire had well burned her unprotected skin. Dry sobbing as the pain continued to shock through her, she managed to cast a high level Stopga on the doppelganger, forcing its time to pause while she tended to the burn.

After quaffing a potion, Juste decided that the best defense was a good offense, He called up his magic and started throwing spell after spell at the copy, forcing it to back up and making it stagger. With breathing room cleared, he called his magic again and cast Hydro Storm. The copy stood there for a moment, and then it began to writhe and scream as the water rained down on it, burning holes in its clothing and leaving smoking holes in its pasty skin. It screamed as it tried to brush the burning water off and stumbled back away from him. He ran forward, swinging the Vampire Killer as the spell ended, but too late he saw the glow around it.

The copy rose off the floor as a column of dark light appeared around it. Before Juste could react, he felt the burning cold of a corrupted version of Grand Cross attacking him. He screamed in pain as the dark power began to tear and burn at him, and he stumbled away from the upside down crosses (Were they formed from bone? he wondered as he stumbled back.) and dropped to the floor. He gasped for air as he pulled a holy water from his pocket and threw it on the floor around him and willed it to chase his attacker away while he dealt with the injuries from the attacks. Calling again on his rapidly depleting magic reserves, he cast his own healing spell, and he sighed in relief as his body healed from the beating it had just taken.

He was then forced to jump to his feet and back away as the holy water stopped, and the copy charged at him again. He quickly fished out a Mana Prism to refill his magic, and then dodged the copy's whip strike and retaliated with one of his own.

With the copy temporarily Stopped, Aqua called up a large dose of magic and cast Curaga on herself, soothing her frazzled nerves and slowly healing the burns on her arm. Due to its prior damage coupled with strong magic, her left sleeve was completely destroyed. Only the band with her armor gem remained (and thank any deities for that). She still bore light scarring from the burns, but she could take the time to heal them more fully later. She sighed in relief before jumping back into action just as her spell wore off on her double.

Before it had time to react, Aqua sent a flurry of high powered spells at it. The copy was sent flying from a heavy ice spell that collided dead on with it, and the following flame spell caught it on an arm that it had flung up in protection the same way Aqua had. It did manage to throw a barrier up as Aqua briefly paused as she cast a thunder spell, so Aqua stopped her spellcasting and dashed for her double. Just as it lashed out with an ice chunk of its own, Aqua Teleported directly behind the creature and brutally slashed it with Stormfall. It screeched, a long line of red ichor sprouting along its back. Aqua gave it no time to recover as she sliced at it again and again. It frantically tried to match her blows, and succeeded until it put too much pressure on its weakened ankle. It crumpled and attempted to roll, all the while causing the injury on its back to worsen from the strain.

Juste nearly cheered as the Vampire Killer struck the copy directly in the face. It howled as its papery skin burned and peeled off, and it batted at its face to try and smother the flames. Seizing the opportunity, he streaked forward at it and cracked his whip again as it flailed about. The tip of the Vampire Killer connected solidly against its right shoulder, and with a small eruption of gore, its arm fell off and dropped to the floor, where it laid on the tiles, twitching. A quick burst of fire magic incinerated it, and he pulled out one of his silver daggers and threw it. The weapon imbedded itself in the back of its left hand, and it was forced to drop its whip as the dagger severed the tendons in its fingers. Another quick burst of fire destroyed the mockery of the Vampire Killer, leaving it with only magic.

It snarled and glared at him with one eye – the other was melted from the fire – and it cast its own version of Holy Lightning. Juste dodged the dark beams of electricity as they made his hair stand up on end, and he pulled out another dagger and plunged it into the creature's heart as it ran forward to attack him. It screeched and howled as the silver blade burned the skin around the stab wound, and he shoved it in as far as he could go as it began to stumble. He then jumped back a few steps and cast Hydro Storm again. The creature tried to scream, but blood burst from its mouth as its skin melted and peeled under the magical attack. Smoke rose from the wound in its chest, and as it collapsed to the floor, Juste lashed out with the Vampire Killer one last time, catching it solidly in the head.

Finally, the combined force of the silver, the magic, and the whip was enough to destroy whatever kept the thing animated, and it collapsed lifeless to the tile floor and went up in a purifying fire. Still not taking any chances, Juste did the same as he had done with the Elite in the Entrance Hall and summoned down lightning to destroy the corpse.

Aqua followed her copy as it tried to roll away, and cried, "Faith!" as she neared it. The pillar of light, cast almost directly on top of the creature, blasted it back, and its landing was far from graceful. It lay stunned, its clothing smoking slightly from the light damage. Aqua quickly ran up to it before it could recover, and cast a powerful Firaga directly at the copy. It shrieked in pain and anger as its skin blistered and cracked as the full power of the spell impacted its body. As the spell faded, its glare was filled with rage, the golden eyes practically screaming murder at Aqua. It summoned its remaining strength to slash at Aqua from the ground, but she batted the weak swing aside easily, and the dark keyblade dropped from its grip, spiralling aside before vanishing into shadow. Aqua finally stabbed the creature before her through the chest, a grating sound from beneath the body informing her that she had plunged the keyblade all the way through the stone below. It gasped before it sighed and lit up in white flames that consumed it to dust.

As soon as the danger passed, Aqua's legs gave out and she dropped ungracefully to the floor, leaving her keyblade where it stood. She had used up more of her magic on this doppelganger and healing than usual. She managed to yank an Ether out of her pocket and downed it, feeling her magic restore to a safe level gratefully.

Juste leaned over, hands on his knees, catching his breath. When he looked up, he saw a glint of something among the ashes that was all that remained on his copy. He walked over and picked it up, and he wasn't surprised when he saw it was another piece of the dragon crest.

He looked around for Aqua and spotted her sitting on the floor on the opposite side of the room, looking as exhausted as he felt. "Miss Aqua," he called, and she looked up at him, "check where yours fell. Mine dropped part of the crest that we need."

She refocused her eyes on what was before her. A fragment of the crest lay just beside her keyblade still buried slightly in the floor. She dismissed Stormfall and held up the piece so Juste could see it. She pushed herself back up and plodded towards him. "Sanctuary. Now, please," was about the most she could manage at the moment.

He took the piece from her trembling hand. "I agree wholeheartedly. Let us go." He stuffed the piece into a pocket, and followed her out of the room. They wandered tiredly back to the sanctuary they had left earlier, and he realized his arms were shaking as he opened the blue glowing doors. The statue of Raphael was waiting for them, and he sighed as the peace of the room washed over him. He reached out and touched the statue, and once his magic had recovered, he flopped down bonelessly to the grass and pulled another meal pack out of his pocket. He canceled the spells and handed it to Aqua as she stepped up to the statue. He then took a second pack and took a second to check his pocket watch. He raised an eyebrow when he saw that it had been almost four hours since they had eaten last in the chapel sanctuary.

She tiredly raised her arm to touch the statue's hand and felt the power rush back into her, before she managed to take the proffered meal pack and drop to the ground right where she stood. She leaned back against the angel as she heated the food with a minor use of magic. The battle had seriously exhausted her, and she scarfed the food down before she shifted to the side so she could lay down and sleep. She needed to recover from her physical fatigue and the residual effects of burning so much magic before she could finish healing the wounds on her arm. Aqua didn't even bother saying a word; she just dropped off to sleep as soon as she had settled on the grass.

Juste quickly made short work of his own meal, and he drank down a bottle of water. Burning the trash, and stuffing the empty bottle back into a pocket, he laid back on the grass and pillowed his head on his arms. He closed his eyes, and soon he too was asleep.

Chapter 5 -- Chapter 7
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