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Refrain of Darkness Chapter 10
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.
10.
Juste didn't sleep long. He could feel Dracula's presence, even from within the soothing calm of the sanctuary, and he wouldn't be able to completely relax with it there. Hopefully, what little sleep he got would be enough.
He sat up and rubbed the sand out of his eyes as he looked around. The statue had recharged, and the soft glow lit the clearing. Aqua was still lying nearby, but her breathing made it clear that she was not asleep. His still felt satisfied after the meal he had eaten earlier, so he hadn't slept for more than a few hours. He pulled off the ribbon that kept his hair back, finger combed it as best he could, and retied it. He then reached into a pocket and fished out a bit of jerky to snack on while he waited for Aqua to stir.
He didn't wait long. Once she heard movement that was more than a simple stirring in sleep, she sat up and rubbed her forehead.
"Are you all right?" he asked. She looked like she hadn't slept at all.
"I'll be better once we get this over with and I go home," she replied, a bit more bluntly than she'd intended.
"If you like, I can use a spell to get you a few hours sleep. You won't stand a chance against Death or Dracula if you're tired."
"Is it dreamless?"
"Yes, though I can't give you more than a few hours. Any more than that will result in you being too groggy to think clearly when you wake."
"Can I break it from the inside if I feel the need to?"
Juste shrugged. "That I honestly can't tell you. I rarely use it, and so far no one has tried."
She glanced away. "Then no more than an hour. If I don't know that I can break it, don't put me under for any longer than that. If you're sure we have the time for this. I can handle myself as I am. Sleep doesn't actually do anything for my magic supply, and I've operated under conditions far worse to my body than this. I would be fine."
"Alright then." Juste stood up and walked over to her. "Ready?" She nodded, and he held out his hand, like he wanted her to take it. Instead he called up his magic like he did for normal spellcasting, but now he sent towards her with the intent of making her sleep for an hour. He'd used it on Lydie once, during her pregnancy with Alexandra, when it seemed she was always too uncomfortable to sleep. She'd later described it as feeling like she was being wrapped in a warm blanket.
He felt the magic leave his hand, felt it flow over to Aqua and wrap around her.
It might have been comforting for Lydie, but Aqua was a magic user herself from another world, and she found it rather more disconcerting to allow herself to fall prey to a spell like that. It made her feel mostly numb, rather than warm.
Aqua sank down to the grass as her eyes closed, and Juste wondered about the merits of trying to squeeze in another hour himself, but no. Dracula's presence was hammering against his senses. It was doubtful he'd be able to relax enough to sleep again without another major battle to tire him out first. He would just have to wait and relax while Aqua slept.
Once exactly one hour passed, Aqua awoke, suddenly and almost unexpectedly. She shook herself, throwing off the remnants of Juste's spell like a cat shakes off water: in a most perturbed manner.
"Feeling any better?" Juste asked from where he sat, leaning against the statue.
Not really, but... "My headache has waned; I should be fine." She stood and brushed the grass from her clothes.
Juste replaced his breastplate, shrugged his coat on, and stood as well. "Are you ready?"
"Yes." Let's get this over with.
Juste nodded and walked out of the sanctuary and back out into the staircase. Once Aqua had joined him, he led her back into the castle entrance.
"We have to go up from here." he explained as he cleared out the zombies that spawned up from the floor. "We'll return to the warp room by where we faced the incubus, and then take that staircase up. No doubt it leads to the upper part of the castle, where Death and Dracula will be waiting for us."
"Why bother waiting for us?" she asked. "Why not make it as difficult as possible for us to reach them so we're already tired by the time we get there?" Not that it was at all easy to tire a keybearer out, but that was beside the point.
"I said Dracula is powerful." Juste replied. "I never said he was intelligent. He certainly was as a human, but that all seemed to vanish once his second wife died. His ability to make rational decisions apparently died with her."
"And Death isn't smart enough either?"
"Death does whatever Dracula tells him." They reached the opening in the ceiling and quickly climbed back up. The maids had reappeared, but his and Aqua's magic cleared them out before they had a chance to stand up from the floor. "Death can be cunning when it suits him, but once Dracula is around, he is little more than a dog on a leash."
"Seems an inefficient way to be." She cut down another lackey in their path, using only her blade and minor spells on them. She wasn't about to waste valuable magic on these creatures now, even though she had a vast pool at her disposal. Juste seemed to think the two they would face would be incredibly difficult, and she was inclined to agree. Thus it wouldn't do to tire herself before they got there.
"I for one, am grateful. I shudder to think of what Dracula would be like if he had retained all of the intelligence and tactical genius he had as a human. The man helped lead an army, and his company never lost, so the idea of such a being having all of Dracula's power frightens me more than I can say."
He pushed open the doors to the warp room. "So we're returning to the warp room by where the incubus was. I'll see you there." He stepped into the circle and directed it where to send him. A few seconds later, he appeared in the other room, and he stepped aside to wait for Aqua.
She arrived moments later with no trouble. "Lead on," she suggested.
They walked out of the warp room into the short hallway, and it was a quick walk to the stairs. Before they were more than a few steps up, Juste heard a sound he had been dreading, and he groaned and ran his hand down his face.
"What is it?" she asked straight away. She could hear a faint metallic ticking sound, evenly spaced and repetitive, multiplied by a dozen, and a whirring noise along with it.
He didn't answer. He continued up the staircase and pushed open the hatch at the top. He climbed up through it and turned to offer Aqua a hand up. They were standing in the center of a large square shaped room with a ceiling that stretched up for dozens upon dozens of yards. Spinning gears of various sizes covered the walls, some small enough to fit in the palm of one's hand, others large enough to cover a house. Platforms moved up and down through the space, some via tracks in the set into the walls, while others simply floated in midair, held up by the castle's magic. Three enormous brass weights, the smallest of which was twice Juste's height, hung suspended from the distant ceiling as they regulated the clock's function. Spikes covered sections of the floor as well as parts of the walls, and they were coated with blood and bits of tissue. Several of them had scraps of clothing and dried bones tangled up in them.
And above it all, small flying creatures that consisted only of a head with small snakes for hair, flew through the room, seemingly materializing from one wall and vanishing when they reached the opposite.
"Welcome, Miss Aqua," Juste said with a sardonic smile, "to the Clock Tower."
"At least it's clockwork, I suppose. I've always been quite agile, and I've experience with this sort of moving platform business. The gore is new, though." She remembered flitting through the strange underground system of Disneytown years ago, with its clockwork and steam platforms, hands, and tubes. She had fallen repeatedly, but she had plenty of determination and cleared the entire place. "What do I need to know about those things flying around?"
"Those are Medusa Heads, and you should avoid them at all costs. The green ones will hurt you and knock you back. We don't know how they do it, but they do. The yellow ones are far, far worse. They not only hurt you and knock you back, but they also petrify you, and when you are petrified, things... do more damage to you. The good news if you can get yourself out of the petrification by struggling enough, but it's something to avoid in here."
"Can they be destroyed?" If she could hit them before they hit her, there should be no problem.
"Oh yes, they go down in one hit, but they just keep reappearing. We have no idea where they are coming from. Medusa herself wasn't even in the castle this time, and one would think that they were coming from her, but you can stand here all day and slaughter them by the dozens. They'll just keep coming back."
That was bothersome, but nothing to be done about it except deal with it and push through. "All right. Does the path change, can you tell, or is it the same as the last time you went through?"
"The Clock Tower is always different, like the rest of the castle, and this one seems much more vertical than the one I went through before. I also don't remember seeing so many spikes."
"Lovely. Trial and error then, I suppose. Would it at least be reasonable to assume that if we want the top of the tower, we can just focus on moving upward? Or is there some part of this that's more maze-like than that?" She had started to really understand that the castle made very little sense at times.
"This one looks pretty straight forward, though I'm sure we'll find the occasional side room, and no doubt a sanctuary is in here somewhere." He glanced up. "I'm certain that there are other floors above this one as well." He then turned and looked at Aqua. "Well, nowhere else to go but up. Shall we get started?"
"Of course," she sighed. So. Kill the heads, and keep a lookout for their revival. While jumping across moving gears and pendulums. No problem. At least she very rarely took falling damage.
Juste looked up at the various gears and platforms, and then he cast a feather light spell on himself before he hopped up onto the nearest gear, one a little shorter than himself. He walked with it as it turned for a few seconds, careful to step only on the teeth rather than risk getting a foot caught between them and eyed his next jump. Medusa Heads came out of the wall in front of him, but a quick lightning spell took care of them.
A platform, one using magic to keep itself up, dropped down on his left, and he quickly hopped up onto it and rode it up while he waited for Aqua to catch up to him.
Aqua followed easily, and fairly quickly, knowing that it would be best to keep as near as she could manage. She knew from experience that the platforms tended to move quickly, even in other places, and so if she weren't fast enough she wouldn't be able to catch up any time soon. The platform Juste had taken had risen beyond the height that a regular jump could reach, so she drew on her skills and High Jumped up to it with a neat flip, with a quick Doubleflight to give her that little extra lift she needed to catch the platform and hop up onto it.
"Impressive." Juste said with a small smile. "I can do that myself, but I prefer not too. The landing can be painful if I misjudge, even with the feather light spell."
"I only rarely get hurt from a fall. Usually it's only if I land poorly. As long as I'm on my feet, I don't usually take injury from it. I believe it's a bonus from my armor, though it could be my magic as well. I've never really thought about it."
"Magic is wonderful for things like that, but it has its limits somewhere, and I'd rather not find it in the worst possible way." Juste said as he kept an eye on a group of approaching Medusa Heads. At the rate the platform was rising, they would run right into them. He stepped in front of Aqua and held the Vampire Killer out in front of him. With a twist of his wrist, he caused the whip to spin in front of him, and the Medusa Heads flew right into it. They vanished in little bursts of flame, and they were able to step off at the top of the ride onto an outcropping of stone jutting from one of the tower walls.
"You make a good point, but I've trusted my body for years, and it hasn't failed me yet." One of the heads approached from the gears they had just left moments ago, and she shot it from the air with a quick fire spell.
"True enough." Juste jumped towards another gear, this one much larger than the first one, but his foot slipped. His heart seemed to stop for a second, but then he quickly used his magic to give him a surface to jump off of a second time. Nothing was visible to the eye, but he could feel it under his feet as he pushed off of it and landed on the gear. The gear was turning clockwise, and one side of it ran up against a set of broken spikes. The ragged remains of a shirt was caught up in them. He walked across the teeth, but they were too big to walk across without stepping into the gaps. He stumbled a bit and looked up to find the next place to jump to.
Aqua, on the other hand, had always found her footing quite easily, and was able to compensate for the gaps and teeth of the gears without much trouble. She hopped from step to step, eyes on her path but not concentrating too hard on them alone. Juste, on the other hand, was not paying enough attention to his surroundings, and one of the yellow heads, coming up at them from an angle Aqua didn't have line of sight to, sailed straight into him, petrifying him in the process.
Aqua gaped for a moment as Juste turned to stone right in front of her. She didn't have time to just stare for long, though, as the Medusa head came after her next. She dispatched it quickly.
Juste felt the Medusa Head fly right into his chest, and he was lifted off of his feet and tossed backwards towards the wall just as he felt his body stiffen, freezing him in position. Fortunately, he did not fall and remained on the gear. Unfortunately, he the gear was rotating towards the spikes on the wall, taking him with it. As much as the petrification would allow he wiggled his body and flexed his muscles, and he was rewarded when the stone covering him began to crack and crumble. He thought he could almost feel the spikes poking him in the back when the stone finally shattered just as the cog was about to push him into them.
He jumped straight up into the air and called his magic up. This caused him to fly straight up in the air and land on the underside of a platform above. He crouched there, upside down for a second, before he dropped back down. A quick double jump later, and he landed neatly on another platform just above the gear he had been standing on.
He raked his hair back from his face as he willed his heart to slow down. "I hate the clock tower!" he called down to Aqua.
"You don't say," she snarked in reply, and executed another High Jump towards the wall over the spikes, then when she landed on the rounded side, she pushed off them in another jump to meet up with Juste once again.
"You need to quit making this look so easy." he told her. "My ancestors are laughing at me now. I know it."
She laughed in response. "Sorry, acrobatics are sort of my thing. Ven and I made Terra look like a charging bull most of the time because he'd keep going even though we'd already vaulted out of his path. This place is actually not all that difficult for me. The flying heads that turn you to stone are unpleasant, but the obstacle course isn't so bad."
"I've been taught my entire life that I shouldn't envy, but," Juste shook his head, "I find it rather hard not to when I see you doing things like that."
"I'm sorry, should I tone it down?" she joked. Then she fired a chunk of ice at an approaching head.
"Yes, please." he replied with a grin as he fired off a Magic Missile spell at a few more heads. "My poor masculinity cannot handle being shown up by a woman like this. I might have to start wearing my wife's dresses at this rate."
She laughed again, bright and cheerful. "Oh, I'm so very sorry. I'll try to remember how delicate it is and be more sensitive."
He leveled her with a serious look and drew himself up. "You do that." He then snorted with laughter. "Remind me when we get out of here to introduce you to my sister. I think you two would get along wonderfully."
"I know nothing about her, but from that statement alone, I already like her." The platform reached its peak, and Aqua hopped off onto another set of gears. Two heads flew at her, and she zapped them with Thunder.
Juste followed her. "The only reason it's me here instead of her is that I have more raw power than her, and Sara chose me, so I was the one trained to use the whip. She was also trained in the ways of the vampire hunter, but I'm the head, I guess you can say, of the family."
"Hm, that's not so different from how keyblades work. Keyblades choose their wielders, more than anything. The ability can be passed on through a rite, but one has to have the capability to begin with. When I was discovered to have the ability to wield one, I was taken in by Master Eraqus, and trained until I could summon one reliably, then I continued to learn and practice until I passed the Mark of Mastery exam. Ven was something of an orphan that was brought to us by someone else." She decided to neglect that particular facet of the tale, since Xehanort was an extremely sore subject. "He trained with us for quite a while before he managed to summon his keyblade for the first time. We weren't sure if he would ever be able to for some time. He had been a wielder before, but he had an accident, of sorts, and his heart had been damaged. Then Terra, he had been an orphan himself that Eraqus had taken in before his ability to use a keyblade was evident. But he could, though not until I came to that world too. He had trained a little longer than me, but he wasn't chosen by a keyblade until I began practicing with him. And then years later, I passed the Mastery exam, and he...didn't." She shook her head, dislodging the memories of pain and worry from that time. "But anyway, there are probably many people throughout the worlds that could technically use a keyblade if they were trained to, but if a keyblade never chose them, they would still never be able to wield one."
"Are keyblades common? The Vampire Killer is unique, as far as I know, though the ritual that created it is known by others. The circumstances that need to line up to make the ritual work are blessedly rare, so I know of no other weapon like it."
"I know I probably made it sound like it, but no, they're actually not. They used to be, in long ages past. There was a great war, called the Keyblade War, in which thousands died fighting to possess something known as Kingdom Hearts. The world where the war came to a head is called the Keyblade Graveyard now, because all of the keyblades of the fallen now stand where they died. However, now there are only a few that I know of. A couple years ago there were twenty: seven of light, and thirteen of darkness. Now, the darkness has been extinguished, and so only the light remain, with a couple of additions brought over from the darkness. I'm also fairly certain that Riku's blade is a neutral one, rather than of darkness or light, but as he fought on the side of light, he was thus considered such himself. There are a fair number of Keychains, however, that we can use to change the design and attributes of our individual keyblades. I'd show you if we weren't in the middle of something."
"We'll add it to the list of things we'll have to talk about in front of a crackling fire later." Juste spun the whip again to clear a few Medusa heads, before taking advantage in the break in their appearance and jumped off the gear onto another moving platform.
She followed once again, gracefully never missing her intended landing. She only misjudged a jump once as they moved through the tower. She hadn't leapt quite far enough, and her foot slipped off the edge. She caught herself by her fingertips on the ledge, however, and managed to vault herself back up.
Juste sighed with relief when they reached the top. Well that was the first part of the tower down. They stood at the base of a staircase up to the next level, and he reached out and caught Aqua by the shoulder when she went to go up.
"I feel I should warn you." he said when she looked at him questioningly. "The next area up is likely to be worse. I can't hear over the noise of the machinery, but I've no doubt we'll find Harpies up there to accompany the Medusa Heads. The two of them will make climbing up very dangerous, especially when I'm also expecting for us to have to jump across swinging pendulums as well."
Pendulums didn't sound like a terrible trial. The harpies, however... "All right, tell me about these Harpies." She wondered how similar they were to the harpies of Greek mythology.
"They're some strange cross of a woman and a bird. Human faces, and their upper body is like a woman's, but they are covered in golden feathers from the neck down, and they have wings instead of arms, bird's talons instead of feet. They prefer to try and get close to you to either push you off your perch or kick you. If you keep your distance they will fire razor-sharp feathers at you instead."
Exactly like the depictions of the Greek harpies then. "They sound lovely," she drawled. "Any particular weaknesses? Fire, I presume, would burn their feathers quite satisfactorily."
"They are rather fragile, so anything you can think of will work." He gestured at the stairs. "Shall we?"
"No sense in wasting time," she replied, and started up with her blade still in her hand. She had hardly de-summoned it the majority of the time in the castle.
Juste went up the stairs without another word, as they emerged into the upper floor, his suspicions were confirmed by the sounds of flapping wings. He cleared the steps and had to quickly spin the whip to clear a space out of the Medusa Heads so Aqua could come up safely. A quick look upward showed that the room was relatively free of gears, but multiple pendulums, some nearly as large as the largest gears in the room below, were swinging from the ceiling. Above them, harpies flapped around, though they hadn't appeared to have noticed the two people down at the floor level. That, he knew, wouldn't last long.
"Could we just take them both down right away, so they don't have a chance to knock us off the pendulums?" Aqua questioned in a low tone beside Juste.
"We certainly can, but more will simply take their place, very much like how the Medusa Heads just keep reappearing, so will these."
"How does that work, I wonder? What do these creatures draw on to produce more of themselves in that way? Heartless draw on darkness, of which there is an endless supply, but I don't know if these monsters are quite the same." Philosophical and curious, even in the middle of a challenge.
"We can only assume that the castle, as well as Dracula himself, are calling them forth from whence they came. Once Dracula is defeated, and the castle has crumbled, you won't see them again until the next resurrection." Juste eyed the platforms and traced up the path they would have to take to reach the top. "Let's get going then."
He hopped up onto the nearest platform and looked up at the harpies as it ascended. It didn't take long for the lowest flying harpy to notice him, and it screeched as it flew down to him. He dodged its sharp talons and sent the Vampire Killer whipping out at it. The whip struck true against its neck, and the creature screeched again, this time in pain, before vanishing in a puff of feathers.
Aqua followed as she had before, and soon enough they drew towards the next harpy. Aqua didn't wait for it to notice them, but cast a quick succession of moderate fireballs at it, aiming for the feathered wings that would so easily transfer a flame to the rest of it.
Juste hopped up onto the next platform as the second harpy went down in flames, and he watched the nearest pendulum as it swung to and fro, gauging its speed and figuring the best time to jump onto it. It wouldn't be a problem really if he missed, but it would waste time, and he wanted out of this clock tower as quickly as possible. The pendulum swung back in his direction, and before it could reach the end of the swing, he leapt off of the platform and onto its brass surface. His boots slipped on the polished metal, but he grabbed onto the massive rod it was hanging from and used that to steady himself as it swung back towards the next one.
The flapping of wings fell on his ears then, and he looked up to see a harpy swooping down towards him. He held his hand out towards it, and ice shards flew from his hands and impacted its wings, coating its flight feathers in ice. The creature struggled for a moment, and then it suddenly dropped down to the floor far below.
Aqua waited for Juste to jump to the next pendulum before attempting to move onto it herself. While the platforms were manageable, as it was easy to keep one's balance on them, the pendulums were a different matter. But once he crossed to the second one, she leapt onto the first, catching the rod with her free hand. It would seem the next harpy had learned from its fellows, and only approached so far, remaining at range to beat its wings and pelt her with the aforementioned razor-sharp feathers.. Aqua threw up her barrier, and the feathers plinked into them and fell far below. "Only three?" she questioned when they were arrested by her shield. "I expected that to be far more problematic." She allowed her shield to fall, and sent more fire missiles from her blade to destroy the harpy.
A quick glance showed that no more harpies had appeared for the moment, so Juste leapt over to the next, smaller pendulum. He then turned and kept an eye out for more harpies as Aqua jumped over to the one he had just left. She made the jump easily, and just in time as three more harpies appeared near the ceiling and started to come down to them. Hydro Storm would have taken care of them easily, but he didn't dare use water while they were climbing, so the next best thing was...
His magic surged forward as he cast Stardust, sending it streaking up from behind him only to rain down on the harpies a second later. They screeched and screamed under the onslaught, and he gestured for Aqua to come forward, just before he leapt off of the pendulum and onto a platform.
She made that jump as well, her timing necessarily accurate, and continued onto Juste's spot. "I like that spell," she remarked with a smile.
He returned the smile. "It certainly does come in handy, doesn't it?" He looked up; they were almost to the top.
He jumped up onto a series of small gears on the wall, and walked up them as they grew in size until he reached another moving platform. No more harpies appeared, so it was an easy ride to the top, where another solid platform waited, with a staircase leading to the next floor. He waited for Aqua to join him, and then they proceeded up the stairs. They came up into a small square room, with two doors on opposite walls, and wrought iron fences on the other two sides. Withered vines covered the thin, iron bars, their leaves lying in a pile on the floor.
Juste pointed out the one side, at the full moon shining down on the castle, bathing the room in silver light. "Do you see what I mean? The moon had been less than half full when we entered the castle, and I highly doubt that we've been in here long enough for the moon to go from its first quarter to full on its own. This is the castle's magic at work."
"The castle can advance the stage of a celestial body? That seems unreal. How can something have that much power?"
Juste continued to look out at the moon, with the spire of the throne room rising in front of it. "It gets even more bizarre when you realize that it's only affected in the view of someone in the castle. If we were to leave the castle right now, the moon would be as it should. If you look at that large room with the pointed roof in front of it with the staircase leading down? That's the throne room, and once we are on that staircase, the moon will turn the color of blood. It's eerie."
She tilted her head, considering that. "Is the castle frozen in time, then? So then it's not influencing the moon, but rather showing the area to be as it was at one particular time in the past?"
"I honestly cannot tell you. No one really knows how this castle works, not even Dracula himself, I'm certain. Time seems to have little meaning here, as I'm sure that once we leave, we'll find out that we've been in here for several days when it feels like it's only been a few at most."
Aqua nodded, frowning, and as she looked down from the sky, she noted the vines. "They're dead. I guess it really was Lauriam's influence then, huh? And with him no longer in control, the plant life is dying."
"It certainly seems like it. Dracula has no care for such things, so without Lauriam, all the plant life is withering away." Juste turned away from the vines and looked at the two doors. One was the glowing blue of a sanctuary, the second, he had no doubt, led to where Death was certainly waiting for him. "Death is up ahead, and he is a difficult fight. We should rest up before continuing."
"Are you certain it's necessary? We didn't exactly waste all that much energy making our way through the tower."
"Yes, it is necessary." Juste replied in a firm tone. "I need you to trust me on this one. We will need every drop of energy we can spare to survive what is coming." He didn't wait for an answer as he walked into the sanctuary. He went right up to the statue and touched it and felt the magic he had used refill as the ache in his legs from jumping around faded.
Aqua merely shrugged and followed after him. He was the expert here, after all. She was little more than his assistant, really.
Juste settled down in front of the statue and pulled out a bit of jerky and a bottle of water to snack on. He tossed a second bottle to Aqua when she sat down nearby.
She accepted it gratefully and sipped on it steadily, refilling her cells after the unusual amount of jumping around they'd had to do. It hadn't been particularly difficult, in her opinion, perhaps given her greater agility. But it was still quite a bit of exercise that differed from her usual fighting style. She was highly mobile, certainly, but not in a way that required her to frequently gain elevation. Unlike Juste, she didn't eat anything. She didn't feel the need for it, and she didn't want more weight settling in her digestive tract. It would only slow her down.
Juste finished his water and stuffed the empty bottle in his pocket. Aqua tossed the other to him, and it went into the pocket as well. He then finished off his jerky and stood up. "Are you ready?"
"Yes." She was ready to be done here.
Juste led the way out of the sanctuary, across the small room that they had come up in to, and through the door on the other side.
On the other side of the door was a large, square room, deeper and longer than the rooms below. On one wall was the clock face, with is massive drive shaft stretching across the room to meet the series of gears on the other side. On either side of the clock face were more wrought iron fences overlooking the castle below. Across the room was another door, set in the middle of the wall.
In the center of the room was Death, scythe out and at the ready. Juste stopped several feet away from him.
"You have served your purpose." Death said, and his hollow sounding voice echoed around the room.
"Then let's get this over with." Juste replied.
Death dropped down towards the floor and flew straight at him. Juste jumped to the side and sent the Vampire Killer flying out after him. It connected with Death's back, but unlike every other creature inside the castle, there was no sign of injury. If it hadn't been for Death's pained yell, he wouldn't have been able to tell if he had hit him at all.
There was a clicking sound, followed by a whirring, and Juste didn't look. He merely dodged to the side once again to avoid the little sickle that came spinning down from above. It hit the floor and vanished.
"Look out for the sickles!" he called to Aqua as he dodged a second one. "They can appear anywhere!"
Aqua dodged one, then parried another with her blade before she was forced to flip backwards to avoid another much too close to her face. Once the sickle attack ceased, she fired off a fast Triple Blizzaga at Death.
Death laughed as his scythe vanished, and he held out his skeletal arms. Eight glowing curved blades appeared in the air in front of him, and then one after another, four of them went after Juste, while the other four honed in on Aqua. Juste jumped over the first, jumped to the left to avoid the second, slid under the third, and used the Vampire Killer to knock the fourth away. He scrambled to his feet, dodged two more sickles that were honing in on him and castle Magic Missile at Death just as he resummoned his scythe and went flying after Aqua.
Aqua called her barrier up, and the first blade struck it and fell away, but the second one cracked it. In surprise, and unwilling to find out what might happen if the third were to shatter it, she dropped the shield and leapt away to avoid the other two in quick succession. And then immediately thereafter, she was forced to dodge back again as Death fell upon her with a swift swing of his scythe. She could not merely dodge forever, though, so she threw her blade up to intercept the second swipe, and their weapons collided with a shriek of metal. Rather than attempt (and fail) to push back against him with her blade, she used him as a counterweight to propel herself further away and grant her just enough time to send a Fission Firaga at him. The explosive fire struck him head on, rolling over his robes, but it didn't seem to phase him, and she was grateful when Juste arrived to distract him.
Juste cast Hydro Storm while Death was preoccupied by Aqua, and the spell filled the room, hitting Death repeatedly and temporarily clearing out the sickles flying through the air. As soon as the spell ended, however, they reappeared, and he spun the Vampire Killer in a circle to take out five that were flying towards him. He ran across the room, and he managed to land a second hit with the Vampire Killer before Death darted across the room, leaving a trail of rapidly spinning sickles in his wake.
Aqua dodged as the sickles spun at them, knocking a few of them to the ground with her weapon. They were such a pain. She utilized the distance between herself and Death to lock onto him and send a Meteor Shower at him, the rain of stars pelting him mercilessly.
Death grunted in pain and rose quickly into the air before coming down bringing his scythe down hard enough to embed the blade in the floor. Juste imagined that he could almost hear the shing! of the blade as it just missed him. He ducked and scrambled away, but a sickle came down and sliced his left sleeve open. It cut through his coat, his undershirt, and cut a gash in his upper arm. Blood welled in the wound and ran down, and he hooked the Vampire Killer onto his belt so he could use his right hand to reach into a pocket and pull a potion out. He flipped the cork out, drank it down, and then had to roll away again as Death streaked across the room, leaving another trail of sickles as he went.
Juste dropped the potion bottle and grabbed for the Vampire Killer, and he spun it over his head to clear the sickles away as they came towards him.
"Firestorm!" A whirling ring of fire formed in the air, and Death grunted again as he was caught in it but he moved away before it could run its course.
Aqua made good use of her distance from their opponent. In between dodging and parrying the endless sickles, she shot spell after spell at Death, each one zooming towards him with ferocious intent. A few missed as he moved, but most of them collided with him. They simply weren't painful enough to do much damage. She smacked another sickle away, but the angle was poor and it caught her ankle as it tumbled to the floor, leaving her a painful scratch that she did her best to ignore as it wasn't life threatening. Instead she used the pain to concentrate on building up the energy to cast Ice Barrage. The initial ice that formed didn't bother Death in the slightest, but the huge crystal that shot up a moment later crashed into him solidly and tossed him into the air. He let out a pained noise as he quickly regained his stance, and flew after Aqua in retaliation. She danced back, avoiding his blade as quickly as possible, but she wasn't quite fast enough to avoid taking a cut to her arm. It sliced through her sleeve and cracked the arm band that held it to her as well as giving her a nasty scratch. She cried out and leapt away, but he pursued. She used his next attempt to teleport behind him and put a Firaga through his back.
Death paused where he was, and Juste stopped and watched him. One bony arm was held in the air, and Juste felt the floor under his feel crackle and tingle. He jumped away just in time to see a column of white light erupt from the floor where he had been standing. A second later, the spot where he was standing did the same, and he began to run across the room, pursued by the light columns as he went. They made a loud buzzing sound as they erupted from the floor, and he caught a glimpse of Aqua dodging her own set as he ran.
Finally the floor stopped tingling, he ducked and rolled under a sickle, and once again Death laughed and summoned the eight curved blades. Juste managed to fire off a Salamander spell just before he had to start dodging the blades.
Aqua dodged around the blades, not wanting to chance blocking or parrying them given what they'd done to her shield. She only narrowly avoided one of the four, if taking a cut to her hip counted as avoiding having it stab through her leg. Once they were gone, she smacked another sickle from the air as it spun toward her and then cast Fission Firaga once again at the enemy.
Death paused in mid air and laughed. The light seemed to be sucked out of the air around him. He laughed again as chains erupted from the floor ceiling and walls, forming a cage. Juste spun around in place, but he could see no gap big enough to fit through. Death held his arms out, and his scythe began to spin around in a blur, bouncing off the floor, ceiling, and walls of the cage.
Juste dove to the side as the spinning scythe flew towards him, and there was the screech of metal as it ricocheted off the chains and went back in the opposite direction.
"Fire!" He fired off a series of fireballs, but they bounced off and fizzled away without appearing to do anything.
Aqua dropped to the ground to avoid the scythe as it swept past her, then rolled and sent equally ineffective ice chunks at Death as he continued his attack. The scythe spun in her direction again and she swiftly cartwheeled away from it. The 'cage' surrounding them was a fairly large size, but that wasn't particularly helpful even so with a large scythe ricocheting off everything.
There was another screech as Aqua dodged the scythe, and it bounced off the chains and went flying back towards Juste. He double jumped over it, there was another screech, and sparks flew by him as he quickly dropped to the floor as the spinning scythe flew over his head. It bounced off the ceiling, and then angled down and struck the chains over by Aqua. The screeching metal was followed by the metal chains shattering into pieces, and the scythe vanished and reappeared in Death's hand. He spun it a few times before dropping down to floor level and flying towards Juste.
Juste pulled hard on his magic and jumped up onto the ceiling just as the scythe cut through the air where he had been. He dropped back down to the floor, using his double jump to land him several feet away from Death and summoned a frost comet. The large block of ice smashed down between Death's shoulders as he began to turn around, and a grunt showed that Death had felt it.
Aqua stood only a few paces from Juste, and gave him a brief warning to watch his eyes as she took the opportunity to cast Mega Flare. The shot hit Death and transformed into a massive blast that certainly forced a noise from its target. Two very powerful hits in a row had to have done some damage. It was so difficult to tell how much they'd hurt the creature when it gave no real signs of pain or visible damage.
The force of the blast pushed Juste back a few feet. Once they were out of this place, she would have to teach him that spell...
The light faded, and none too soon, and Death set the scythe to spinning in his hand, and then he threw it at them. It whirled through the air, its blade a blur, and it sailed over their heads.
"Look out, Miss Aqua!" Juste called as the scythe reached the wall. Instead of bouncing back to its owner, it went straight down the wall to the floor, and then came at them. Juste jumped over it as it went flying by and returned to Death's hand. Before he could do anything else, Juste called up his magic and pushed it as much as he could into a spell.
"Holy Lightning!"
Lighting erupted from his hand, and it arced around the room. Death made another pained noise, but then he merely laughed again as more chains erupted from the floor. Instead of surrounding them as well as Death, they only surrounded the two of them, and Death did not throw his scythe. Juste looked over at Aqua for a second in confusion, and she mirrored the look just as another chain shot out of the void it came from and wound itself around Aqua.
Aqua struggled hard against the chains, but nothing she could think of to cast could get her out, especially given that most of her useful spells relied on her being able to use her keyblade to target, and she was bound quite tightly here. She glanced at Death to see him drifting towards her, confident in his ability to kill her to the point that he felt no need to rush.
Juste cursed under his breath as Death began drifting over towards Aqua, his scythe at the ready. He sent the Vampire Killer at the chain that bound Aqua, striking it again and again as she struggled. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Death moving closer, clearly not in any hurry.
"Come on, damn you." he said under his breath as the whip took chips out of the metal. "Come on, come on, come on!" Death stopped over Aqua just as the Vampire Killer slammed into the chain one more time. The metal shattered, Aqua dropped to the floor, and she rolled away just as Death's scythe came streaking through the air a split second later.
She didn't dare take the time to consider how very close that was. She just got the hell out of range and yanked an ether from her pocket, downing the blue liquid and restoring her magic. While she was at it, a potion wouldn't be amiss, so she pulled one of those bottles from her pocket and downed that as well, which healed the cuts on her body and the bruising from the chain. Then she got right back to work, shooting spell after spell at Death while avoiding the sickles that had once again resumed their attacks.
Juste took the opportunity to drink down a Mind Up as Death sent his scythe flying along the ceiling again. He tossed the empty bottle aside and dodged to the right to avoid the scythe as it went spinning by along the floor, and he ran after it. It returned to Death's hand, just as Juste reached him, and he lashed out with the Vampire Killer and landed several hits before Death was forced to move away.
"Grand Cross!"
Death yelled as he was caught in the holy power, and as soon as the spell ended, Juste dropped to the floor and dashed away just as the scythe slammed to the floor where he'd been standing. He spun the Vampire Killer to clear away a few sickles just as Death laughed behind him and the chains came out to form the cage. A second later the scythe spun up and began bouncing around, and Juste groaned in frustration.
"He wasn't this difficult last time." he grumbled.
"Frankly, I'm getting a little sick of this," Aqua remarked in reply. Right now, there was no real point in keeping their distance from Death when he wasn't directly holding his scythe, so Aqua decided she needed to release a bit of stress in the form of physical exertion. She waited for the scythe to pass close to Death, then dashed up to the creature with her blade coated in fire and started slashing her blade at him, each strike hitting him until the scythe flashed by again and she had to pause in her attacks to High Jump over it. But she had always had some level of talent with aerial attacks, so once the scythe passed beneath her, she moved right into beating on him with her keyblade again.
Juste dashed in to join her, and the chains containing the scythe shattered as he added his attacks to Aqua's. The scythe returned to Death as he made many grunts and pain sounds, until finally, he flinched back away from them as he screamed. The sound sent chills racing up Juste's spine as it echoed around the room. The scythe went flying as its master lost grip on it, and he jumped back to avoid it just in case.
Aqua threw herself to the side to avoid the weapon, and it lodged itself in the floor several feet away from Death.
The scythe landed with a loud chink! as it embedded itself point first into the floor, and then the room abruptly fell silent aside from the ticking of the clock and their heavy breathing. Juste stepped back and watched as Death began to dissolve, turning into what appeared to be puffs of dark smoke formed into skeletal faces that drifted up towards the ceiling and vanished. Once he had faded away, Juste looked over at Aqua.
"sanctuary?"
"Yes please," she replied with emphasis. Juste had not been kidding, this fight had taken a lot of energy.
They made their way quickly back to the sanctuary, and Juste offered thanks that they had made it through the battle safely. Now, they only had to deal with Dracula.
He sat down at the base of the statue. "We should eat and try to get in a few hours of sleep. Since he used Lauriam to resurrect, Dracula will be a full power, and we'll have to throw everything we have at him to have a chance of making it."
She nodded. Their trek through the castle and battle with Death had thankfully driven her mind away from the dark thoughts of possession that had so plagued her earlier, so she should be able to actually get some rest this time. "And here we thought Death was difficult. Does that mean Dracula will be worse?"
Juste nodded. "Likely yes. Sometimes he's less difficult than Death, but Death always comes back at full strength, while Dracula doesn't always. Since Dracula was able to use another's life to fully resurrect, I expect him to be very, very dangerous this time."
"What fun," she deadpanned, and leaned back against the angel statue. She remembered the damaged cuff on her sleeve, and tugged it off to look at it. A large crack spanned the yellow stone in the center of the metal ring and she sighed. It wasn't on the side she habitually used to trigger her armor, but it could still be a problem. She would need to have it repaired at her earliest convenience.
Juste dug around in his pockets for a moment. "We're down to our last two meal packs," he said, "so we had better make them count." He released the spells and handed one to Aqua. "I have enough jerky and other small things to last for a bit, but if we don't get out of here soon, we'll have to start foraging for food in the walls."
"Food... in the walls?" she repeated, confusion evident in her voice as she accepted the meal.
Juste took a bite before he answered. "Mmhmm." he replied as he waved his fork around. "Don't ask how it came to be there, but myself, my grandfather, Christopher, and Trevor have all found meat in the walls. And it's always perfectly cooked and edible. It's never spoiled or rotten. Leon never encountered such a thing in the castle that came before this one, so we have no idea at all where it came from. It can certainly save your life though."
"That is...incredibly odd." Her mind boggled at the sheer incomprehensibility of that, and she had to shake it from her thoughts so she could concentrate on eating before the food cooled too much.
The room went silent as they focused on their meal, and once it was done and the trash was burned, Juste curled up on the grass to catch some sleep. He had a feeling he was going to need it.
Aqua did the same, and with her inability to sleep earlier and her fatigue from the fight with Death, she dropped off quickly.
Chapter 9 -- Chapter 11
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